The neural cell adhesion molecule is involved in the metastatic capacity in a murine model of lung cancer

Neural cell adhesion molecule (NCAM) is involved in cell growth, migration, and differentiation. Its expression and/or polysialylation appear to be deregulated in many different cancer types. We employed the lung tumor cell line LP07, syngeneic in BALB/c mice to investigate the role of NCAM in malignant progression. LP07 cells express the three main NCAM isoforms, all of them polysialylated. This cells line, pretreated with an anti‐NCAM antibody and inoculated intravenously (i.v.) into syngeneic mice, developed less and smaller lung metastases. In vitro studies showed that NCAM bound antibody inhibited cell growth, mainly due to an increase in apoptosis, associated with a decrease of cyclin D1 and enhanced expression of active caspase 3 and caspase 9. Anti‐NCAM‐treated LP07 cells showed impairment in their ability to migrate and adhere to several extracellular matrix components. Secreted uPA activity was also reduced. NCAM‐140 knocked‐down by siRNA in LP07 cells pretreated or not with anti‐NCAM showed an impaired metastasizing ability upon i.v. inoculation into mice. These results suggest that anti‐NCAM treatment could be mimicking homophilic trans‐interactions and NCAM‐140 knocked‐down impairs heterophilic interactions, both leading to inhibition of metastatic dissemination. The involvement of NCAM in lung tumor progression was confirmed in human NSCLC tumors. Sixty percent of the cases expressed NCAM at tumor cell level. A multivariate analysis indicated that NCAM expression was associated with a shorter overall survival in this homogeneous series of Stages I and II NSCLC patients. NCAM may be able to modulate mechanisms involved in lung carcinoma progression and represents an attractive target to control metastatic progression. Mol. Carcinog. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.