Interleukin-22 promotes aerobic glycolysis associated with tumor progression via targeting hexokinase-2 in human colon cancer cells

Interleukin-22 has been explored extensively in human cancer, but its functions and underlying mechanisms are incompletely understood. Here, we show that aberrant interleukin-22 expression facilitates aerobic glycolysis in colon cancer cells. Elevated interleukin-22 mRNA expression was observed and positively correlated with hexokinase-2 in colon cancer tissues. In vitro, interleukin-22 enhanced glucose consumption and lactate production via targeting hexokinase-2 in colon cancer cells. Moreover, the transcriptional factor c-Myc and signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 were involved in interleukin-22-induced up-regulation of hexokinase-2. We further demonstrated that hexokinase-2 partly accounted for interleukin-22-mediated cellular proliferation in DLD-1 cells. In vivo, our data demonstrated that interleukin-22 significantly promoted tumor growth along with elevated expression of c-Myc and hexokinase-2 in mice. In summary, our findings provide a new perspective on the pro-inflammatory cytokine interleukin-22 in promoting aerobic glycolysis associated with tumor progression in human colon cancer cells.