Integrin Expression and Migration of Adenoid Cystic Carcinoma Cells in Response to Basement Membrane Components

AbstractAdenoid cystic carcinoma iAdCC jis more aggressive than oral squamous cell carcinoma iSCC j and has a proclivity to invade nerve and endothelial sheaths containing basement membrane iBM j . In the present study, we found that AdCC cell lines showed higher motility responses to BM proteins, especially type IV collagen, compared to oral SCC cell lines. Flow cytometric analysis demonstrated that AdCC cell lines showed generally similar pattern of integrin subunits to oral SCC lines. Although AdCC cell lines expressed slightly higher levels of α2β1 and α3β1 integrins than SCC cell lines, these differences were not as impressive as those seen in haptotaxis assays to ECM proteins, and in particular to type IV collagen. Antibody blocking experiments clearly showed that the AdCC motility response to type IV collagen is mainly mediated through α2β1 integrin. In conclusion, such high motility response of AdCC cell lines could not be explained by only the surface levels of integrins, and study on integrin functionality will be more important to elucidate high invasiveness of AdCC cells