Abstract
Background: Cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) are one of the most important components of tumor stroma and play a key role in modulating tumor growth. However, a mechanistic understanding of how CAFs communicate with tumor cells to promote their proliferation and invasion is far from complete. A major reason for this is that most current techniques and model systems do not capture the complexity of signal transduction that occurs between CAFs and tumor cells. Methods: In this study, we employed a stable isotope labeling with amino acids in cell culture (SILAC) strategy to label invasive breast cancer cells, MDA-MB-231, and breast cancer patient-derived CAF this has already been defined above cells. We used an antibody-based phosphotyrosine peptide enrichment method coupled to LC-MS/MS to catalog and quantify tyrosine phosphorylation-mediated signal transduction events induced by the bidirectional communication between patient-derived CAFs and tumor cells. Results: We discovered that distinct signaling events were activated in CAFs and in tumor epithelial cells during the crosstalk between these two cell types. We identified reciprocal activation of a number of receptor tyrosine kinases including EGFR, FGFR1 and EPHA2 induced by this bidirectional communication. Conclusions: Our study not only provides insights into the mechanisms of the interaction between CAFs and tumor cells, but the model system described here could be used as a prototype for analysis of intercellular communication in many different tumor microenvironments.
Original language | English (US) |
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Article number | 21 |
Journal | Clinical Proteomics |
Volume | 15 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jun 15 2018 |
Keywords
- Breast cancer
- Carcinoma-associated fibroblast
- Co-culture
- Epithelial cell
- Mass spectrometry
- Phosphoproteome
- SILAC
- Signaling crosstalk
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Molecular Medicine
- Molecular Biology
- Clinical Biochemistry