Cloning, expression, and characterization of stratum corneum chymotryptic enzyme. A skin-specific human serine proteinase.

Epidermal Overexpression of Stratum Corneum Chymotryptic Enzyme in Mice: A Model for Chronic Itchy Dermatitis

“…The human and murine scce genes The amino acid sequences (as deduced from cDNA) of human and murine SCCE show about 80% similarity (Hansson et al, 1994;Ba Èckman et al, 1999). The genomic organization of the human and murine scce structural genes are schematically shown in Fig 1 . Overall, the organization of the exon±intron structure of the two genes is similar, but due to shorter introns the murine gene is smaller.…”

“…(a)Immunoblot with SCCE-speci®c antibodies, reduced samples. Arrowheads denote, from top to bottom, glycosylated pro-SCCE, mixture of unglycosylated pro-SCCE and glycosylated SCCE, and unglycosylated SCCE (Hansson et al, 1994). Amount of sample applied corresponding to 0.1 mg and 4.5 mg of skin for Tg and Wt, respectively.…”

“…Human and murine scce genes The human scce (hscce) gene was isolated from a human leukocyte genomic library (Clontech, Palo Alto, CA) by using cDNA probes derived from the human scce cDNA (Hansson et al, 1994). Overlapping clones were isolated and the entire structural gene was sequenced and analyzed.…”

“…The stratum corneum is continuously being formed in the process of epidermal differentiation. In our efforts to understand the mechanisms by which a constant thickness of the stratum corneum is maintained via a continuos desquamation of surface cells, we identi®ed two new human serine proteases, stratum corneum chymotryptic enzyme (SCCE; also named kallikrein 7) and stratum corneum tryptic enzyme (SCTE; also named kallikrein 5) (Hansson et al, 1994;Brattsand and Egelrud, 1999;Diamandis et al, 2000a;Ekholm et al, 2000). Both enzymes belong to the kallikrein group of serine proteases, the genes of which are localized to a short stretch of chromosome 19q13.3±q13.4 (Diamandis et al, 2000b).…”

SPINK9: A Selective, Skin-Specific Kazal-Type Serine Protease Inhibitor

“…During the past decade, there has been a lot of focus on potential roles of KLKs as tumor markers, in tumor progression, activation of protease-activated receptors, and activation/inactivation of biologically active peptides (Borgoño et al, 2004;Clements et al, 2004;Oikonomopoulou et al, 2006;Yamasaki et al, 2006;Stefansson et al, 2008). In the skin, two proteases eventually identified as KLK5 (previously stratum corneum tryptic enzyme) and KLK7 (previously stratum corneum chymotryptic enzyme) have been suggested to be involved in skin homeostasis and desquamation (Hansson et al, 1994;Brattsand and Egelrud, 1999). Also several other KLKs, among them KLKs 6,8,9,11,13,and 14, are expressed by the epidermis (Komatsu et al, 2003).…”