www.oncotarget.com Oncotarget, 2018, Vol. 9, (No. 33), pp: 23220-23236 Research Paper MAP4K4 controlled integrin β1 activation and c-Met endocytosis are associated with invasive behavior of medulloblastoma cells Dimitra Tripolitsioti1, Karthiga Santhana Kumar1, Anuja Neve1, Jessica Migliavacca1, Charles Capdeville1, Elisabeth J. Rushing2, Min Ma1, Noriyuki Kijima3, Ashish Sharma4, Martin Pruschy4, Scott McComb1, Michael D. Taylor3, Michael A. Grotzer1,5 and Martin Baumgartner1 1University Children’s Hospital Zürich, Department of Oncology, Children’s Research Center, Zürich, Switzerland 2Institute of Neuropathology, University Hospital Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland 3Division of Neurosurgery, The Hospital for Sick Children, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada 4Department of Radiation Oncology, University Hospital Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland 5University Children’s Hospital Zürich, Department of Oncology, Zürich, Switzerland Correspondence to: Martin Baumgartner, email:
[email protected] Keywords: medulloblastoma; MAP4K4; integrin β1; c-Met; cell migration and invasion Received: November 16, 2017 Accepted: April 08, 2018 Published: May 01, 2018 Copyright: Tripolitsioti et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 3.0 (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. ABSTRACT Local tissue infiltration of Medulloblastoma (MB) tumor cells precedes metastatic disease but little is still known about intrinsic regulation of migration and invasion in these cells. We found that MAP4K4, a pro-migratory Ser/Thr kinase, is overexpressed in 30% of primary MB tumors and that increased expression is particularly associated with the frequently metastatic SHH β subtype. MAP4K4 is a driver of migration and invasion downstream of c-Met, which is transcriptionally up-regulated in SHH MB.