P3.03-19 The Lysyl Oxidase like-1 Promotes NSCLC Tumorigenecity Through Increased Matrix Reorganization and Stiffness

Abstract

The importance of the stroma in tumorigenicity has been increasingly recognized in the past few years and targeting tumor stroma has become a new strategy for the development of new therapies. The lysyl oxidase like-1 (LOXL1) is a matrix cross-linking enzyme, essentially secreted by cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) in the stroma. We previously showed that LOXL1 expression strongly correlated with integrin α11 expression, a collagen receptor that promotes NSCLC tumorigenecity, suggesting that LOXL1 may also contribute to lung tumor growth and metastasis by modifying the stromal collagen matrix. Primary CAFs (CAF094) isolated from a NSCLC resection specimen and immortalized with hTERT were infected with full length LOXL1 (LOXL1 overexpression), LOXL1 shRNA (LOXL1 knockdown) or with their respective controls, using a lentiviral system. To investigate the impact of LOXL1 on collagen matrix reorganization, we allowed CAFs expressing different levels of LOXL1 to contract collagen matrices. Contracted collagen matrices have then been submitted to second harmonic generation to analyze collagen fibers. We established the role of LOXL1 in lung carcinoma invasion and growth using an in vitro organotypic model and an in vivo xenograft model, respectively. LOXL1-overexpressing CAFs embedded in collagen lattices displayed greater ability to reorganize the collagen matrix than those with lower LOXL1 expression. Furthermore, analysis of the collagen matrix demonstrated that LOXL1 contributed to more linear and dense collagen fibers organization. As a consequence of collagen matrix reorganization, invasion of the lung carcinoma H661 cell line significantly increased in an organotypic model in presence of LOXL1-overexpressing CAFs. Moreover, we showed that loss of Loxl1 in mice inhibited subcutaneous growth of the lung adenocarcinoma H4006 cell line compared to the mouse wild-type counterparts. We demonstrated that overexpression of LOXL1 in NSCLC tumor stroma results in an increased of tumor growth and invasion, due to a change in the matrix reorganization. Thus, LOXL1 appears as an interesting target to improve the outcome of lung cancer.