IL-8 released from human pancreatic cancer and tumor associated stromal cells signals through a CXCR2-ERK1/2 axis to induce muscle atrophy

Serum levels of interleukin-8 (IL-8) are increased in the serum of people with pancreatic cancer and associated with the loss of body weight and low muscle mass. We have identified that systemic (intraperitoneal) injection of IL-8 into mice induces significant skeletal muscle atrophy. Transcriptional profiling of muscle harvested from these same mice identified the genes and biological processes associated with this IL-8 induced atrophy including gene clusters related to chromatin modification, muscle cell differentiation, and ubiquitin ligase complex. In this dataset, we include the expression data obtained from the tibialis anterior muscle from vehicle-injected mice, KC-injected mice, and IL-8 injected mice. The purpose of this study was to identify the broader transcriptional networks changed in skeletal muscle in response to a systemic increase in IL-8 or KC. For microarray analysis, a total of 12 RNA samples across three groups are included. The groups are as follows: Vehicle-injected control mice (n = 3); KC-injected mice (n = 4); IL-8 injected mice (n = 5). To identify broader gene networks changed in skeletal muscle in response to systemic delivery of KC or IL-8, we performed differential expression analysis between vehicle injected controls and KC-injected mice, and between vehicle-injected controls and IL-8-injected mice.