Background: Perineural invasion (PNI) is one of the important routes for local spread of gastric carcinoma associated with poor prognosis. However, the exact cellular characteristics and molecular mechanisms of PNI are still unclear.
Aim: To identify the interaction between gastric carcinoma cells and neural cells, and whether vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 (VCAM1) is involved in this process.
Methods: We adopted in vitro cell coculture assays to investigate the cellular and molecular interaction between gastric cancer cells and neural cells.
Results: We find upregulation of VCAM1 in clinical gastric cancer tissue samples. In in vitro tumor-neural cell coculture system, gastric cancer cells with high level of VCAM1 promote proliferation of neural progenitor cells and induce the process outgrowth and branching of neural cells. Reciprocally, neural cells enhance neurotropic migration and mobility of tumor cells. Repressing VCAM1 function through VCAM1 blocking antibody can attenuate these effects.
Conclusions: Our study indicates that VCAM1 is significantly involved in tumor invasion via mediating nerve-tumor interaction, which is a mutually beneficial process. It is possible that interaction between neural cells and tumor cells might contribute to PNI of gastric carcinoma. Inhibiting the activity of VCAM1 could be a potential strategy targeting PNI in gastric carcinoma therapy.
Keywords: Gastric cancer; Neural cell; Perineural invasion (PNI); VCAM1.