HNF-1α promotes urethral fibrosis by up-regulating STAT3 transcriptional activity in mice hypospadias

One of the most prevalent male urogenital anomalies is hypospadias. The general etiology of hypospadias is still not completely clear, despite the fact that the number of patients with the hypospadias is rising. HNF-1α was predicted as the most activated upstream regulator of severe hypospadias in our previous research. Our study aims to investigate the mechanism by which HNF-1α regulates hypospadias. We found that HNF-1α was highly expressed in hypospadias tissues, and was positively associated with fibrinogen related genes FGA and FGB, respectively. In animal experiments, silencing of HNF-1α resulted in a more narrow urethral groove, and a decreased periurethral pathologic fibrosis. Meanwhile, the inflammation cytokines and oxidative stress related factors were significantly reduced after inhibition of HNF-1α expression. In addition, the protein levels of STAT3, FGA and FGB were also depressed after HNF-1α knockdown. Mechanistically, we showed that the HNF-1α transcriptionally activated STAT3, and subsequently increased the expressions of FGA and FGB. Additionally, suppression of HNF-1α improved the murine hypospadias via inactivating the STAT3. Therefore, our findings confirmed that HNF-1α promoted hypospadias and periurethral fibrosis by activating STAT3. Targeting HNF-1α might the future direction for hypospadias treatment.