J Immunol Methods. produce inflammatory factors in response to pathogen recognition receptor (PRR) signaling, which might help to shape the biology of the TME. We determined that mouse ovarian tumors generate chemokines that are able to interact with receptors harbored by tumor-associated DCs. We also found that dsRNA triggers significant pro-inflammatory cytokine up-regulation in both human and mouse ovarian tumor cell lines, and that several PRR can simultaneously contribute to the stimulated inflammatory response displayed by these cells. Thus, dsRNA-activated PRRs may not only constitute potentially relevant drug targets for therapies aiming to prevent inflammation associated with leukocyte recruitment, or as co-adjuvants of therapeutic treatments, but also might have a role in development of nascent tumors, for example via activation of cancer cells by microbial molecules associated to pathogens, or with those appearing in circulation due to dysbiosis. cultured ID8-VegfA cancer cells (C) and normal tissues were subjected to RNA extraction followed by qPCR analysis. Data were analyzed with the Kruskal-Wallis Test (nonparametric ANOVA) followed by Dunn post-test comparisons. LN: Lymph nodes. (D). Analysis of Exodus-2 at the protein level was determined in solid mouse tumor by IHC. Staining of mouse ovarian tumors with CCL21 antibody (Left Panel) and isotype control (Right Panel) shows positive staining both in tumor islets and stroma. (100X magnification). Using qPCR analysis, we analyzed chemokine expression in samples collected from 20 independent solid tumors. We compared chemokine expression to that in immune organs, as well as in cultured ID8-VegfA cells recovered from different experiments. As shown in Figure ?Figure1C,1C, murine ovarian tumors express several Ruxolitinib sulfate chemokines at the RNA level such as ELC/CCL19 (interacts with CCR7); Exodus-2/CCL21 (interacts with CCR7); MIP-1/CCL3 (interacts with CCR1 and CCR5); MIP-1/CCL4 (interacts with CCR5); RANTES/CCL5 (interacts with CCR1, CCR3 and CCR5); and SDF-1/CXCL12 (interacts with CXCR4 Ruxolitinib sulfate and CXCR7). As expected, in most cases the overall levels of chemokines produced by tumors were lower than those of immunological organs, except in the case of MIP-1, or MIP-1, where the expression levels were not significantly different. In addition, with respect to MIP-1, tumor samples appear to express higher levels of the chemokine than those observed in Ruxolitinib sulfate tumor cells in culture. One possible explanation is that this chemokine is produced by tumor cells under the influence of the TME (e.g., different levels of oxygen, 3D environment, lactic acid accumulation, extracellular matrix interaction), or that other TME cells rather than cancer cells are responsible for the elevated expression of this chemokine. An immunohistochemistry analysis of solid tumors revealed the expression Alox5 of Exodus 2/CCL21 at the level of protein (Figure ?(Figure1D),1D), both in tumor islets and stroma, strongly suggesting that tumor cells can be a source of chemokines viability studies (Supplementary Figure 1E-1F). Additionally, we validated the protein array data with respect to IL-6 expression by means of ELISA experiments (Figure ?(Figure2G).2G). On the contrary, no differences in MCP-1/CCL2 expression were observed when using this technique. We also found that MIP-1/CCL4 is upregulated upon transfection with both poly (I:C) and poly (A:U). CXCL2, was present in the supernatants of mouse ovarian tumor cells (Figure ?(Figure2A),2A), but not upregulated upon dsRNA transfection as determined by array analysis (Figure ?(Figure2D),2D), and also showed no differences when analyzed by ELISA. Thus, both RANTES/CCL5 and IL-6 are molecules that were upregulated upon dsRNA transfection of cancer cells at the protein level as determined by two complementary methods. It has been reported that dsRNA can promote the upregulation of dsRNA-sensing PRRs in some cells [52]. In our studies we were able to determine, at the level of RNA, that PKR was the only dsRNA PRR affected by the transfection in these murine ovarian cancer Ruxolitinib sulfate cells, and only upon transfection with poly (A:U), indicating that PKR may participate in a positive feedback loop in response to dsRNA stimulation (Supplementary Figure 1G). PRR polymorphisms have been implicated in poor clinical outcomes in some cancers, an example of which is the overexpression of TLR3 in human ovarian tumors [29]. To further understand the mechanisms by.