Abstract 5163: Rab11 regulates focal adhesion kinase dynamics in sarcoma cell migration

Focal adhesion (FA) turnover has been demonstrated to play an important role in controlling cell migration and cancer metastasis. FA disassembly was shown to be regulated by endocytosis during cell migration. Rabs are a kind of GTPase that participate in various cellular vesicle transports; however, whether the Rabs play a role in mediating vesicle transport for FA formation is not clear. This study focuses on Rab11, which plays a role in endosome recycling, and examines whether Rab11 has regulatory function in FA formation during cell migration. Wild-type and deficient Rab11 were transfected into human HT1080 fibrosarcoma cells, the cell migration ability was determined by trans-well assay, the localization of Rab11 and focal adhesion molecules were monitored by confocal microscopy and the in vivo study was carried out with subcutaneous xenograft mouse model to evaluate the effect of Rab11 on tumor growth. Results showed Rab11 deficiency inhibited sarcoma cell migration; the Rab11 was also found colocalized with recycled β1 integrin and affected focal adhesion formation. The live image results demonstrated the inactive GDP form Rab11 has no effect on random cell migration; however, the Rab11 knockdown inhibited random cell migration. We further used immunofluorescence and immunoprecipitation and identified the physical interaction of Rab11 and FAK. In the in vivo study, wild-type Rab11 transfected cells increased the tumor volume in xenograft mouse, but not in Rab11-deficient cells. Taken together, the results suggested Rab11 affected cell migration by regulating focal adhesion dynamics through integrin recycling and the effect of Rab11 may be through protein-protein interaction other than GTP activation. Citation Format: Ling-Yi Kao, Wan-Chen Wei, Hsiang-Ling Chiu, Yi-Che Wu, Wei-Ting Chao. Rab11 regulates focal adhesion kinase dynamics in sarcoma cell migration [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2018; 2018 Apr 14-18; Chicago, IL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2018;78(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 5163.