Abstract
We have made progress in unravelling the mechanisms of tumor cell invasion by focusing the attention on two molecular pathways including chemokines and extracellular matrix molecules. Chemokines are important mediators of cell signaling that operate both on normal cells and tumor cells and in the immune-cell compartment (Billottet et al, 2013). Among the chemokine receptors, CXCR3 mediate diverse biological functions and comes in two major isoforms the A and B isoform. We found that ligand affinities and conformational changes are very different for the A and B form. We have recently elucidated the role and mechanism of CXCR3A in GBM invasion (Boyé et al, 2017b). We demonstrated that agonist stimulation enhances in vitro cell migration and invasion in GBM cells. A major finding was that CXCR3A forms a complex with the trafficking receptor Lipoprotein-related receptor-1 (LRP1). Silencing of LRP1 leads to an increase in the magnitude of ligand-induced conformational change with CXCR3-A focalized at the cell membrane, leading to sustained receptor activity and increase in the migration. This was also clinically validated. Our study defines LRP1 as a new regulator of CXCR3 and indicates that targeting CXCR3-A in GBM may constitute a promising strategy to halt tumor cell invasion. The extracellular matrix (ECM) has morphogenic roles in tumors. Important ECM components are the matricellular proteins, called thrombospondins(THBS1-5) (Adams and Lawler 2011). We recently elucidated the complex role of THSB1 in GBM invasion (Daubon et al.2019). Global expression analysis revealed that THBS1 is up-regulated in GBMs and associated with a poor prognosis. We, furthermore, demonstrated that THBS1 did not activate TGFβ in GBM but that TGFβ1 induced the expression of THBS1 via SMAD3. Furthermore, GBM invasion is compromised when THBS1 is silenced in tumor cells. Thus, our data clearly show that THBS1 is not only involved in the regulation of angiogenesis in GBM, but also impacts the invasive behaviour of glioma cells by interacting with a molecule called CD47 expressed on the surface of GBM cells. RNA-sequencing after microdissection of central and peripheral tumour areas in a human PDX model demonstrated that THBS1 was the gene with the highest connectivity in the peripheral invasive tumour areas. Taken together, these data indicate that THBS1 plays important role in the infiltrative process in GBM. REFERENCES: Adams JC, Lawler J. Cold Spring Harb Perspect Biol. 2011;3:a009712 Billottet C, Quemener C, Bikfalvi A. Biochim Biophys Acta. 2013;1836:287- Boyé K et al. Sci Rep. 2017;7:10703 Boyé K et al. Nat Commun. 2017;8:1571 Daubon T et al, Nature Communications. Nat Commun. 2019 Mar 8;10(1):1146 Murphy-Ullrich JE, Poczatek M. Cytokine Growth Factor Rev. 2000 11:59