www.impactjournals.com/oncotarget/ Oncotarget, 2017, Vol. 8, (No. 43), pp: 74406-74422 Research Paper Tenascin-C induces migration and invasion through JNK/c-Jun signalling in pancreatic cancer Jun Cai1, Shaoxia Du1, Hui Wang1, Beibei Xin1, Juan Wang1, Wenyuan Shen1, Wei Wei2, Zhongkui Guo1 and Xiaohong Shen1 1School of Medicine, Nankai University, Tianjin 300071, China 2Tianjin Medical University Cancer Institute and Hospital, National Clinical Research Center for Cancer, Tianjin 300060, China Correspondence to: Xiaohong Shen, email:
[email protected] Keywords: TNC, JNK/c-Jun, EMT, pancreatic cancer Received: December 28, 2016 Accepted: June 20, 2017 Published: August 10, 2017 Copyright: Cai 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 Tenascin-C (TNC), a large extracellular matrix glycoprotein, has been reported to be associated with metastasis and poor prognosis in pancreatic cancer. However, the effects and mechanisms of TNC in pancreatic cancer metastasis largely remain unclear. We performed Transwell assays to investigate the effects of TNC on Capan-2, AsPC-1 and PANC-1 cells. In addition, western blot and RT-qPCR assays were used to examine potential TNC metastasis-associated targets, such as JNK/ c-Jun, Paxillin/FAK, E-cadherin, N-cadherin, Vimentin, and MMP9/2. Lastly, we utilized a variety of methods, such as immunofluorescence, gelatin zymography and immunoprecipitation, to determine the molecular mechanisms of TNC in pancreatic cancer cell motility. The present study showed that TNC induced migration and invasion in pancreatic cancer cells and regulated a number of metastasis-associated proteins, including the EMT markers, MMP9 and Paxillin.