Cardiovascular disease (CVD) and cancer are two major causes of death worldwide. The question is, "Could there be a link between these two pathologies in addition to their shared, common risk factors?" To find some answers, we studied the effect of oxidized low-density lipoproteins (oxLDL) on head and neck cancer (HNC) cell lines, since oxLDL is a major contributor to atherosclerosis and the principal cause of CVD. In this study, we exposed three HNC cell lines (Detroit 562, UPCI-SCC-131 and FaDu) to oxLDL. We investigated two oxLDL receptors, CD36 and Lox-1, using immunofluorescence. Cancer cell migration was evaluated using Boyden chambers and the Wnt/β-catenin pathway was investigated using Western blotting. We demonstrated that the expression of CD36 and Lox-1 significantly increases after exposure to oxLDL. Moreover, we found that oxLDL reduces the migration of HNC cell lines, an observation that is in line with an increased degradation of β-catenin under oxLDL. Finally, the inhibition of CD36 with sulfosuccinimidyl oleate (SSO) reverses the inhibition of cell migration. In conclusion, we report that oxLDL seems to induce an increase in CD36 expression on HNC cell lines, enhancing the uptake of these lipids in cells to finally decrease cancer cell migration via the CD36/β-catenin pathway.
Keywords: CD36; HNSCC; Lox-1; cell migration; oxLDL.