gp130 (IL6ST)
gp130, encoded by IL6ST, is the shared signal-transducing receptor subunit used by the IL-6 cytokine family. The canonical human identifiers are UniProt P40189, NCBI Gene 3572, HGNC 6021 and Ensembl ENSG00000134352; the mouse ortholog is Il6st (MGI:96560) 1. Ligand–alpha-receptor complexes recruit gp130, whose associated JAK1, JAK2 and TYK2 support STAT3/STAT1 signaling; RAS–ERK, PI3K–AKT and NF-κB are additional context-dependent outputs 2.
Relevance to IL-11
il-11 first binds IL11RA; the ligand–alpha-receptor complex then recruits gp130. This shared subunit explains why IL-11 can activate canonical STAT3 signaling, but it does not make IL-11 biologically interchangeable with il-6. In recent fibroblast and aging studies, IL-11 phenotypes were strongly linked to non-canonical ERK-dependent programs 34.
Because many cytokines use gp130, gp130 abundance or phospho-STAT3 alone is not a ligand-specific biomarker of IL-11 activity. Open Targets reports antibody clinical precedence for IL6ST through the approved IL6Rα/gp130-complex antagonist satralizumab, but this does not constitute direct selective gp130 inhibition or an aging indication. The aging-context tier therefore remains 2; ligand- and alpha-receptor-selective probes are more interpretable for testing the IL-11 axis 5. Human GTEx age correlations and aging-directed Mendelian-randomization evidence remain unestablished. gap/needs-gtex-aging-correlation
Footnotes
Footnotes
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UniProt P40189; NCBI Gene 3572; HGNC:6021; Ensembl ENSG00000134352; MGI:96560 · canonical database records accessed 2026-08-09 ↩
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Reactome R-HSA-449976 and R-HSA-6783589; WikiPathways WP2332 · human curated pathway records accessed 2026-08-09 ↩
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schafer-2017-il11-cardiovascular-fibrosis · doi:10.1038/nature24676 ↩
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widjaja-2024-il11-healthspan-lifespan · doi:10.1038/s41586-024-07701-9 ↩
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Open Targets Platform IL6ST record ENSG00000134352 and satralizumab record CHEMBL3833307 · accessed 2026-08-09 · raw clinical precedence is not an aging-context tier assignment ↩