It has been shown that EGF stimulation produces a redistribution of α6β4 integrin from hemidesmosomes to the lamellipodia and filopodia of invasive tumor cells[12, 25–28]. The formation of these structures is dependent on PI3K[12, 25, 27]. Factors regulating the transition from adherent cells to invasive motile cells are poorly understood, but α6β4-mediated

activation of the Ras-MAP kinase pathway may be important, as subsequent activation of myosin light chain kinase[29] leads to increased ATPase activity and contractility, which are fundamental to locomotion. Multiple studies have shown significant crosstalk between α6β4 integrin and EGFR in carcinoma cells [12–14]. Following stimulation with EGF, the β4 integrin selleck compound subunit becomes tyrosine phosphorylated

[14, 30], and α6β4 is mobilized from hemidesmosomes to actin-rich protrusions at the leading edge of motile cells[12]. At the leading edge, α6β4 signals through Rho to promote tumor cell migration, perhaps in part by activating Rho to stimulate acto-myosin contraction, necessary for generating traction Selleck Target Selective Inhibitor Library in migrating cells[12, 25, 27]. EGFR has been shown to co-immunoprecipitate with α6β4[13], and EGFR is co-expressed with α6β4 in breast cancers that tend to metastasize to the lungs[11, 31]. In a recent study, Lu et al. found that a 65-gene “”β4 signature”" derived from the top 0.1% of genes that correlated with β4 integrin subunit gene expression was associated with increased tumor recurrence and decreased patient survival when applied to four independent data sets [32]. The investigators hypothesized that a group of genes involved in α6β4 signaling was more likely to be associated with an adverse clinical outcome than α6β4 expression alone. In their study, EGFR was one of the top 10 genes associated with β4

integrin subunit gene expression. Both α6β4 and EGFR are overexpressed in the basal subtype of breast cancers[11]. Recognized histologic variants of this basal subtype have a particular tendency to produce pulmonary metastases and cause early death [33–36]. MDA-MB-231 breast carcinoma cells Fossariinae express α6β4 and EGFR and have been shown to produce pulmonary metastases in nude mice[37]. The mechanism of α6β4-mediated pulmonary metastasis appears to involve recognition of hCLCA2, a β4-binding protein expressed in lung endothelial cells[38] that appears to serve as a specific vascular address for circulating tumor cells(12). If α6β4 functions, in part, to recognize this vascular address, EGFR may help to mediate the translocation of tumor cells into the adjacent tissue, as EGF has been shown to be a potent chemotactic factor for breast carcinoma cells [39, 40]. We previously observed that antibody-mediated crosslinking of α6β4 in suspended MDA-MB-231 cells was sufficient to induce cell surface α6β4 clustering[20].