Regulation of Autophagy by VEGF-C axis in cancer

A major contributor to cancer mortality is recurrence and subsequent metastatic transformation following therapeutic intervention. In order to develop new treatment modalities or improve the efficacy of current ones it is important to understand the molecular mechanisms that promote therapy-resistance to cancer cells. One pathway that has been demonstrated to therapy resistance is autophagy, a self-digestive process that can eliminate unnecessary or damaged organelles to protect cancer cells from necrosis. Effective targeting of this pathway could lead to the development of new therapies. In our studies, we found that the VEGF-C/NRP-2 axis is involved in the activation of autophagy, which is essential for the survival of cancer cells following chemotherapy treatment. Furthermore, we identified two VEGF-C/NRP-2-regulated genes, LAMP-2 and WDFY-1 that have previously been suggested to participate in autophagy and vesicular trafficking. The upregulation of WDFY-1 upon depleted level of VEGF-C contributed to cytotoxic drug-mediated cell death. Altogether, these data suggest a link between VEGF-C/neuropilin-2 axis and cancer cell survival despite the presence of chemotherapy-induced stress.

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Stanton MJ, Dutta S, Zhang H, Polavaram NS, Leontovich AA, Hönscheid P, Sinicrope FA, Tindall DJ, Muders MH, Datta K