Canonical Wnt Signaling Is Critical to Estrogen-Mediated Uterine Growth

Major biological effects of estrogen in the uterus are thought to be primarily mediated by nuclear estrogen receptors, ERα and ERβ. We show here that estrogen in an ER-independent manner rapidly up-regulates the expression of Wnt4 and Wnt5a of the Wnt family and frizzled-2 of the Wnt receptor family in the mouse uterus. One of the mechanisms by which Wnts mediate canonical signaling involves stabilization of intracellular β-catenin. We observed that estrogen treatment prompts nuclear localization of active β-catenin in the uterine epithelium. We also found that adenovirus mediated in vivo delivery of SFRP-2, a Wnt antagonist, down-regulates estrogen-dependent β-catenin activity without affecting some of the early effects (water imbibition and angiogenic markers) and inhibits uterine epithelial cell growth, suggesting that canonical Wnt signaling is critical to estrogen-induced uterine growth. Our present results provide evidence for a novel role of estrogen that targets early Wnt/β-catenin signaling in an ER-independent manner to regulate the late uterine growth response that is ER dependent.