Inhibition of autophagy impairs tumor cell invasion in an organotypic model

Autophagy is a membrane-trafficking process that delivers cytoplasmic constituents to lysosomes for degradation. It contributes to energy and organelle homeostasis and the preservation of proteome and genome integrity. Although a role in cancer is unquestionable, there are conflicting reports that autophagy can be both oncogenic and tumor suppressive, perhaps indicating that autophagy has different roles at different stages of tumor development. In this report, we address the role of autophagy in a critical stage of cancer progression—tumor cell invasion. Using a glioma cell line containing an inducible shRNA that targets the essential autophagy gene Atg12, we show that autophagy inhibition does not affect cell viability, proliferation or migration but significantly reduces cellular invasion in a 3D organotypic model. These data indicate that autophagy may play a critical role in the benign to malignant transition that is also central to the initiation of metastasis.     

EMT impairs breast carcinoma cell susceptibility to CTL-mediated lysis through autophagy induction

Epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT) has become one of the most exciting fields in cancer biology. While its role in cancer cell invasion, metastasis and drug resistance is well established, the molecular basis of EMT-induced immune escape remains unknown. We recently reported that EMT coordinately regulates target cell recognition and sensitivity to specific lysis. In addition to the well-characterized role for EMT in tumor phenotypic change including a tumor-initiating cell phenotype, we provided evidence indicating that EMT-induced tumor cell resistance to cytotoxic T-lymphocytes (CTLs) also correlates with autophagy induction. Silencing of BECN1 in target cells that have gone through the EMT restored CTL susceptibility to CTL-induced lysis. Although EMT may represent a critical target for the development of novel immunotherapy approaches, a more detailed understanding of the inter-relationship between EMT and autophagy and their reciprocal regulation will be a key determinant in the rational approach to future tumor immunotherapy design.     

Survival or death: disequilibrating the oncogenic and tumor suppressive autophagy in cancer

Autophagy (macroautophagy) is an evolutionarily conserved lysosomal degradation process, in which a cell degrades long-lived proteins and damaged organelles. Recently, accumulating evidence has revealed the core molecular machinery of autophagy in carcinogenesis; however, the intricate relationship between autophagy and cancer continue to remain an enigma. Why does autophagy have either pro-survival (oncogenic) or pro-death (tumor suppressive) role at different cancer stages, including cancer stem cell, initiation and progression, invasion and metastasis, as well as dormancy? How does autophagy modulate a series of oncogenic and/or tumor suppressive pathways, implicated in microRNA (miRNA) involvement? Whether would targeting the oncogenic and tumor suppressive autophagic network be a novel strategy for drug discovery? To address these problems, we focus on summarizing the dynamic oncogenic and tumor suppressive roles of autophagy and their relevant small-molecule drugs, which would provide a new clue to elucidate the oncosuppressive (survival or death) autophagic network as a potential therapeutic target.     

Novel insights into how autophagy regulates tumor cell motility

Metastasis requires tumor cells to overcome a series of challenges to successfully travel to and colonize new microenvironments. As an adaptive (or maladaptive) response to stress, macroautophagy/autophagy has garnered increasing interest with respect to cancer metastasis, supported by clinical observations of increased autophagic flux in distant metastases relative to primary tumors. Recently, we identified a new role for autophagy in tumor cell motility through the turnover of focal adhesions, large multi-protein structures that link extracellular matrix-bound integrins to the cytoskeleton. The disassembly of focal adhesions at the cell rear is critical to forward movement and successful migration/invasion. We demonstrated that the focal adhesion protein PXN (paxillin), which serves as a crucial scaffolding and signal integrator, binds directly to LC3B through a conserved LC3-interacting region (LIR) motif to stimulate focal adhesion disassembly and metastasis and that this interaction is further promoted by oncogenic SRC.     

A role of autophagy in PTP4A3-driven cancer progression

Autophagy, a “self-eating” cellular process, has dual roles in promoting and suppressing tumor growth, depending on cellular context. PTP4A3/PRL-3, a plasma membrane and endosomal phosphatase, promotes multiple oncogenic processes including cell proliferation, invasion, and cancer metastasis. In this study, we demonstrate that PTP4A3 accumulates in autophagosomes upon inhibition of autophagic degradation. Expression of PTP4A3 enhances PIK3C3-BECN1-dependent autophagosome formation and accelerates LC3-I to LC3-II conversion in an ATG5-dependent manner. PTP4A3 overexpression also enhances the degradation of SQSTM1, a key autophagy substrate. These functions of PTP4A3 are dependent on its catalytic activity and prenylation-dependent membrane association. These results suggest that PTP4A3 functions to promote canonical autophagy flux. Unexpectedly, following autophagy activation, PTP4A3 serves as a novel autophagic substrate, thereby establishing a negative feedback-loop that may be required to fine-tune autophagy activity. Functionally, PTP4A3 utilizes the autophagy pathway to promote cell growth, concomitant with the activation of AKT. Clinically, from the largest ovarian cancer data set (GSE 9899, n = 285) available in GEO, high levels of expression of both PTP4A3 and autophagy genes significantly predict poor prognosis of ovarian cancer patients. These studies reveal a critical role of autophagy in PTP4A3-driven cancer progression, suggesting that autophagy could be a potential Achilles heel to block PTP4A3-mediated tumor progression in stratified patients with high expression of both PTP4A3 and autophagy genes.     

QSOX1 Inhibits Autophagic Flux in Breast Cancer Cells

The QSOX1 protein (Quiescin Sulfhydryl oxidase 1) catalyzes the formation of disulfide bonds and is involved in the folding and stability of proteins. More recently, QSOX1 has been associated with tumorigenesis and protection against cellular stress. It has been demonstrated in our laboratory that QSOX1 reduces proliferation, migration and invasion of breast cancer cells in vitro and reduces tumor growth in vivo. In addition, QSOX1 expression has been shown to be induced by oxidative or ER stress and to prevent cell death linked to these stressors. Given the function of QSOX1 in these two processes, which have been previously linked to autophagy, we wondered whether QSOX1 might be regulated by autophagy inducers and play a role in this catabolic process. To answer this question, we used in vitro models of breast cancer cells in which QSOX1 was overexpressed (MCF-7) or extinguished (MDA-MB-231). We first showed that QSOX1 expression is induced following amino acid starvation and maintains cellular homeostasis. Our results also indicated that QSOX1 inhibits autophagy through the inhibition of autophagosome/lysosome fusion. Moreover, we demonstrated that inhibitors of autophagy mimic the effect of QSOX1 on cell invasion, suggesting that its role in this process is linked to the autophagy pathway. Previously published data demonstrated that extinction of QSOX1 promotes tumor growth in NOG mice. In this study, we further demonstrated that QSOX1 null tumors present lower levels of the p62 protein. Altogether, our results demonstrate for the first time a role of QSOX1 in autophagy in breast cancer cells and tumors.     

Autophagic secretion of HMGB1 from cancer-associated fibroblasts promotes metastatic potential of non-small cell lung cancer cells via NFκB signaling

Tumor progression requires the communication between tumor cells and tumor microenvironment (TME). Cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) are major components of stromal cells. CAFs contribute to metastasis process through direct or indirect interaction with tumor cells; however, the underlying mechanism is largely unknown. Here, we reported that autophagy was upregulated in lung cancer-associated CAFs compared to normal fibroblasts (NFs), and autophagy was responsible for the promoting effect of CAFs on non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) cell migration and invasion. Inhibition of CAFs autophagy attenuated their regulation on epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT) and metastasis-related genes of NSCLC cells. High mobility group box 1 (HMGB1) secreted by CAFs mediated CAFs’ effect on lung cancer cell invasion, demonstrated by using recombinant HMGB1, HMGB1 neutralizing antibody, and HMGB1 inhibitor glycyrrhizin (GA). Importantly, the autophagy blockade of CAFs revealed that HMGB1 release was dependent on autophagy. We also found HMGB1 was responsible, at least in part, for autophagy activation of CAFs, suggesting CAFs remain active through an autocrine HMGB1 loop. Further study demonstrated that HMGB1 facilitated lung cancer cell invasion by activating the NFκB pathway. In a mouse xenograft model, the autophagy specific inhibitor chloroquine abolished the stimulating effect of CAFs on tumor growth. These results elucidated an oncogenic function for secretory autophagy in lung cancer-associated CAFs that promotes metastasis potential, and suggested HMGB1 as a novel therapeutic target.Subject terms: Cancer microenvironment, Non-small-cell lung cancer, Metastasis, Translational research     

Autophagy triggered by magnolol derivative negatively regulates angiogenesis

Angiogenesis has a key role in the tumor progression and metastasis; targeting endothelial cell proliferation has emerged as a promising therapeutic strategy for the prevention of cancer. Previous studies have revealed a complex association between the process of angiogenesis and autophagy and its outcome on tumorigenesis. Autophagy, also known as type-II cell death, has been identified as an alternative way of cell killing in apoptotic-resistant cancer cells. However, its involvement in chemoresistance and tumor promotion is also well known. In this study, we used a derivate of natural product magnolol (Ery5), a potent autophagy inducer, to study the association between the autophagy and angiogenesis in both in vitro and in vivo model system. We found that the robust autophagy triggered by Ery5, inhibited angiogenesis and caused cell death independent of the apoptosis in human umbilical cord vein endothelial cells and PC-3 cells. Ery5 induced autophagy effectively inhibited cell proliferation, migration, invasion and tube formation. We further demonstrated that Ery5-mediated autophagy and subsequent inhibition of angiogenesis was reversed when autophagy was inhibited through 3-methyl adenine and knocking down of key autophagy proteins ATG7 and microtubule-associated protein light chain 3. While evaluating the negative regulation of autophagy on angiogenesis, it was interesting to find that angiogenic environment produced by the treatment of VEGF and CoCl2 remarkably downregulated the autophagy and autophagic cell death induced by Ery5. These studies, while disclosing the vital role of autophagy in the regulation of angiogenesis, also suggest that the potent modulators of autophagy can lead to the development of effective therapeutics in apoptosis-resistant cancer.     

TMEPAI increases lysosome stability and promotes autophagy

Autophagy is emerging as a critical response of normal and cancer cells to environmental changes and plays an important role in cell metabolism and maintenance of damaged organelles. Transmembrane prostate androgen-induced protein (TMEPAI) is a pro-tumorigenic factor with high expression in tumor cells. In this study, we showed that depletion of TMEPAI leads to lysosomal labilization and inhibits autophagy. Further study showed that the inhibition of autophagy induced by the depletion of TMEPAI is involved in regulation of Beclin-1. Depletion of TMEPAI increases the sensitivity of cancer cells to chemotherapeutic drugs. Our study reveals the role of TMEPAI in promoting lysosome stability and autophagy, which might be used as a target for cancer chemotherapeutic treatment.     

Tumor suppression by autophagy through the management of metabolic stress

Autophagy plays a critical protective role maintaining energy homeostasis and protein and organelle quality control. These functions are particularly important in times of metabolic stress and in cells with high energy demand such as cancer cells. In emerging cancer cells, autophagy defect may cause failure of energy homeostasis and protein and organelle quality control, leading to the accumulation of cellular damage in metabolic stress. Some manifestations of this damage, such as activation of the DNA damage response and generation of genome instability may promote tumor initiation and drive cell-autonomous tumor progression. In addition, in solid tumors, autophagy localizes to regions that are metabolically stressed. Defects in autophagy impair the survival of tumor cells in these areas, which is associated with increased cell death and inflammation. The cytokine response from inflammation may promote tumor growth and accelerate cell non-autonomous tumor progression. The overreaching theme is that autophagy protects cells from damage accumulation under conditions of metabolic stress allowing efficient tolerance and recovery from stress, and that this is a critical and novel tumor suppression mechanism. The challenge now is to define the precise aspects of autophagy, including energy homeostasis and protein and organelle turnover, that are required for the proper management of metabolic stress that suppress tumorigenesis. Furthermore, we need to be able to identify human tumors with deficient autophagy, and to develop rational cancer therapies that take advantage of the altered metabolic state and stress responses inherent to this autophagy defect.     

Epigenetic regulation of autophagy: A key modification in cancer cells and cancer stem cells

Aberrant epigenetic alterations play a decisive role in cancer initiation and propagation via the regulation of key tumor suppressor genes and oncogenes or by modulation of essential signaling pathways. Autophagy is a highly regulated mechanism required for the recycling and degradation of surplus and damaged cytoplasmic constituents in a lysosome dependent manner. In cancer, autophagy has a divergent role. For instance, autophagy elicits tumor promoting functions by facilitating metabolic adaption and plasticity in cancer stem cells (CSCs) and cancer cells. Moreover, autophagy exerts pro-survival mechanisms to these cancerous cells by influencing survival, dormancy, immunosurveillance, invasion, metastasis, and resistance to anti-cancer therapies. In addition, recent studies have demonstrated that various tumor suppressor genes and oncogenes involved in autophagy, are tightly regulated via different epigenetic modifications, such as DNA methylation, histone modifications and non-coding RNAs. The impact of epigenetic regulation of autophagy in cancer cells and CSCs is not well-understood. Therefore, uncovering the complex mechanism of epigenetic regulation of autophagy provides an opportunity to improve and discover novel cancer therapeutics. Subsequently, this would aid in improving clinical outcome for cancer patients. In this review, we provide a comprehensive overview of the existing knowledge available on epigenetic regulation of autophagy and its importance in the maintenance and homeostasis of CSCs and cancer cells.     

Tumor suppression by autophagy through the management of metabolic stress

Autophagy plays a critical protective role maintaining energy homeostasis and protein and organelle quality control. These functions are particularly important in times of metabolic stress and in cells with high energy demand such as cancer cells. In emerging cancer cells, autophagy defect may cause failure of energy homeostasis and protein and organelle quality control, leading to the accumulation of cellular damage in metabolic stress. Some manifestations of this damage, such as activation of the DNA damage response and generation of genome instability may promote tumor initiation and drive cell-autonomous tumor progression. In addition, in solid tumors, autophagy localizes to regions that are metabolically stressed. Defects in autophagy impair the survival of tumor cells in these areas, which is associated with increased cell death and inflammation. The cytokine response from inflammation may promote tumor growth and accelerate cell non-autonomous tumor progression. The overreaching theme is that autophagy protects cells from damage accumulation under conditions of metabolic stress allowing efficient tolerance and recovery from stress, and that this is a critical and novel tumor suppression mechanism. The challenge now is to define the precise aspects of autophagy, including energy homeostasis, and protein and organelle turnover, that are required for the proper management of metabolic stress that suppress tumorigenesis. Furthermore, we need to be able to identify human tumors with deficient autophagy, and to develop rational cancer therapies that take advantage of the altered metabolic state and stress responses inherent to this autophagy defect.     

MicroRNA-524-5p suppresses the progression of papillary thyroid carcinoma cells via targeting on FOXE1 and ITGA3 in cell autophagy and cycling pathways

MicroRNAs are beneficial for cancer therapy as they can simultaneously downregulate multiple targets involved in diverse biological pathways related to tumor development. In papillary thyroid cancer, many microRNAs were identified as differentially expressed factors in tumor tissues. In another way, recent studies revealed cell proliferation, cell cycling, apoptosis, and autophagy are critical pathways controlling papillary thyroid cancer development and progression. As miR-524-5p was approved as a cancer suppressor targeting multiple genes in several types of cancer cells, this study aims to characterize the role of miR-524-5p in the thyroid cancer cell. The expression of miR-524-5p was decreased in the papillary thyroid cancer tissues and cell lines, while forkhead box E1 (FOXE1) and ITGA3 were increased. In the clinical case, expression of miR-524-5p, FOXE1, and ITGA3 were significantly correlated with papillary thyroid cancer development and progression. FOXE1 and ITGA3 were approved as direct targets of miR-524-5p. miR-524-5p could inhibit papillary thyroid cancer cell viability, migration, invasion, and apoptosis through targeting FOXE1 and ITGA3. Cell cycling and autophagy pathways were disturbed by downregulation of FOXE1 and ITGA3, respectively. Collectively, miR-524-5p targeting on FOXE1 and ITGA3 prevents thyroid cancer progression through different pathways including cell cycling and autophagy.     

Interplay between apoptosis and autophagy,a challenging puzzle: New perspectives on antitumor chemotherapies

Autophagy is a mechanism of protection against various forms of human diseases, such as cancer, in which autophagy seems to have an extremely complex role. In cancer, there is evidence that autophagy may be oncogenic in some contexts, whereas in others it clearly contributes to tumor suppression. In addition, studies have demonstrated the existence of a complex relationship between autophagy and cell death, determining whether a cell will live or die in response to anticancer therapies. Nevertheless, we still need to complete the autophagy–apoptosis puzzle in the tumor context to better address appropriate chemotherapy protocols with autophagy modulators. Generally, tumor cell resistance to anticancer induced-apoptosis can be overcome by autophagy inhibition. However, when an extensive autophagic stimulus is activated, autophagic cell death is observed. In this review, we discuss some details of autophagy and its relationship with tumor progression or suppression, as well as role of autophagy–apoptosis in cancer treatments.     

Autophagy-Regulated ROS from Xanthine Oxidase Acts as an Early Effector for Triggering Late Mitochondria-Dependent Apoptosis in Cathepsin S-Targeted Tumor Cells

Cathepsin S (CTSS), which is highly expressed in various malignant tumor cells, has been proposed to promote tumor progression, migration, and invasion. CTSS inhibition not only blocks tumor cell invasion and endothelial tube formation but also induces cellular cytotoxicity. In our previous studies, we have observed that CTSS inhibition induces autophagy, which is responsible for up-regulating xanthine oxidase for early ROS generation and consequent cell death. However, whether the autophagy-regulated early ROS triggers apoptosis remains unclear. We conducted a long-term follow-up study to investigate the relationship between early autophagy and late mitochondria-dependent apoptosis. We demonstrated that early ROS generation is critical for mitochondria damage and the activation of intrinsic apoptotic pathway. Attenuating the early ROS level diminished later mitochondrial damage and downstream apoptotic signaling. Collectively, mitochondria-dependent apoptosis is regulated by autophagy-regulated early ROS, which serves as an early effector that triggers mitochondrial signaling for late apoptosis. The data emphasize the essential role of autophagy-regulated early ROS in triggering late apoptotic signaling.     

A role of autophagy in PTP4A3-driven cancer progression

Autophagy, a “self-eating” cellular process, has dual roles in promoting and suppressing tumor growth, depending on cellular context. PTP4A3/PRL-3, a plasma membrane and endosomal phosphatase, promotes multiple oncogenic processes including cell proliferation, invasion, and cancer metastasis. In this study, we demonstrate that PTP4A3 accumulates in autophagosomes upon inhibition of autophagic degradation. Expression of PTP4A3 enhances PIK3C3-BECN1-dependent autophagosome formation and accelerates LC3-I to LC3-II conversion in an ATG5-dependent manner. PTP4A3 overexpression also enhances the degradation of SQSTM1, a key autophagy substrate. These functions of PTP4A3 are dependent on its catalytic activity and prenylation-dependent membrane association. These results suggest that PTP4A3 functions to promote canonical autophagy flux. Unexpectedly, following autophagy activation, PTP4A3 serves as a novel autophagic substrate, thereby establishing a negative feedback-loop that may be required to fine-tune autophagy activity. Functionally, PTP4A3 utilizes the autophagy pathway to promote cell growth, concomitant with the activation of AKT. Clinically, from the largest ovarian cancer data set (GSE 9899, n = 285) available in GEO, high levels of expression of both PTP4A3 and autophagy genes significantly predict poor prognosis of ovarian cancer patients. These studies reveal a critical role of autophagy in PTP4A3-driven cancer progression, suggesting that autophagy could be a potential Achilles heel to block PTP4A3-mediated tumor progression in stratified patients with high expression of both PTP4A3 and autophagy genes.     

Protector turns predator

Therapy-induced autophagy is recognized as a critical determinant of treatment outcome in cancer patients, primarily as a factor underlying drug resistance. However, recent investigations point toward a context-dependent, death-inducing role for autophagy, the mechanism of which remains largely unknown. Our recent study provides evidence that autophagy can directly mediate cell killing in multiple tumor cell types by facilitating degradation of KRAS/K-Ras, a key survival protein. These findings have broad implications for strategies employing autophagy modulation to target tumor cells.     

Role and regulation of autophagy in cancer

Autophagy is an intracellular self-degradative mechanism which responds to cellular conditions like stress or starvation and plays a key role in regulating cell metabolism, energy homeostasis, starvation adaptation, development and cell death. Numerous studies have stipulated the participation of autophagy in cancer, but the role of autophagy either as tumor suppressor or tumor promoter is not clearly understood. However, mechanisms by which autophagy promotes cancer involves a diverse range of modifications of autophagy associated proteins such as ATGs, Beclin-1, mTOR, p53, KRAS etc. and autophagy pathways like mTOR, PI3K, MAPK, EGFR, HIF and NFκB. Furthermore, several researches have highlighted a context-dependent, cell type and stage-dependent regulation of autophagy in cancer. Alongside this, the interaction between tumor cells and their microenvironment including hypoxia has a great potential in modulating autophagy response in favour to substantiate cancer cell metabolism, self-proliferation and metastasis. In this review article, we highlight the mechanism of autophagy and their contribution to cancer cell proliferation and development. In addition, we discuss about tumor microenvironment interaction and their consequence on selective autophagy pathways and the involvement of autophagy in various tumor types and their therapeutic interventions concentrated on exploiting autophagy as a potential target to improve cancer therapy.     

MAP1S Controls Breast Cancer Cell TLR5 Signaling Pathway and Promotes TLR5 Signaling-based Tumor Suppression

Targeting TLR5 signaling in breast cancer represents a novel strategy in cancer immunotherapy. However, the underlying mechanism by which TLR5 signaling inhibits cancer cell proliferation and tumor growth has not been elucidated. In this study, we found TLR5 agonist flagellin inhibited the cell state of activation and induced autophagy, and reported that autophagy protein MAP1S regulated the flagellin/TLR5 signaling pathway in breast cancer cells through enhancement of NF-κB activity and cytokine secretion. Remarkably, MAP1S played a critical role in tumor suppression induced by flagellin, and knockdown of MAP1S almost completely abrogated the suppression of tumor growth and migration by flagellin treatment. In addition, elevated expression of MAP1S in response to flagellin feed-back regulated tumor inflammatory microenvironment in the late stages of TLR5 signaling through degradation of MyD88 in autophagy process. These results indicate a mechanism of antitumor activity that involves MAP1S-controlled TLR5 signaling in breast cancer.     

CCL2, survivin and autophagy: new links with implications in human cancer

Recent data strongly support the idea that the orchestrated interaction between cancer and other cells in the tumor microenvironment is a vital component in the neoplastic process. Thus, tumor cells take advantage of the signaling molecules of the immune system to proliferate, survive, and invade other tissues. CCL2 (Chemokine (C-C motif) ligand 2, Monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1) has been demonstrated to play a significant role in prostate cancer neoplasia and invasion, and is highly expressed in the tumor microenvironment. We recently reported that CCL2 elicits a strong survival advantage in prostate cancer PC3 cells through PI3K/Akt-dependent regulation of autophagy via the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathway and importantly, survivin upregulation is essential in this survival mechanism. Autophagy protects cells from nutrient depletion stress, but, paradoxically, excessive autophagy will result in cell death. How these life or death decisions are regulated remains unclear. Here we discuss the function of survivin in the control of autophagy and the interaction between CCL2, survivin and autophagy in the complex program of tumor progression.