No abstract

Emerging evidences suggest that cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitors (CKIs) can regulate cellular functions other than cell cycle progression, such as differentiation and migration. Here, we report that cytoplasmic expression of p27(kip1) affects microtubule (MT) stability following cell adhesion on extracellular matrix (ECM) constituents. This p27(kip1) activity is due to its ability to bind and impair the function of the MT-destabilizing protein stathmin. Accordingly, upregulation of p27(kip1) or downregulation of stathmin expression results in the inhibition of mesenchymal cell motility. Moreover, high stathmin and low cytoplasmic p27(kip1) expression correlate with the metastatic phenotype of human sarcomas in vivo. This study provides a functional link between proliferation and invasion of tumor cells based on diverse activities of p27(kip1) in different subcellular compartments.

The balanced activity of microtubule-stabilizing and -destabilizing proteins determines the extent of microtubule dynamics, which is implicated in many cellular processes, including adhesion, migration, and morphology. Among the destabilizing proteins, stathmin is overexpressed in different human malignancies and has been recently linked to the regulation of cell motility. The observation that stathmin was overexpressed in human recurrent and metastatic sarcomas prompted us to investigate stathmin contribution to tumor local invasiveness and distant dissemination. We found that stathmin stimulated cell motility in and through the extracellular matrix (ECM) in vitro and increased the metastatic potential of sarcoma cells in vivo. On contact with the ECM, stathmin was negatively regulated by phosphorylation. Accordingly, a less phosphorylable stathmin point mutant impaired ECM-induced microtubule stabilization and conferred a higher invasive potential, inducing a rounded cell shape coupled with amoeboid-like motility in three-dimensional matrices. Our results indicate that stathmin plays a significant role in tumor metastasis formation, a finding that could lead to exploitation of stathmin as a target of new antimetastatic drugs.