Study on FAK regulation of migration of vascular endothelial cells depending upon focal adhesion proteins / 生物医学工程学杂志

ABSTRACT

Tumor angiogenesis induced by vascular endothelial cells (VECs) migration is a necessary condition for tumor growth and metastasis. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of focal adhesion kinase (FAK) inhibitor (50nmol/mL) on the adhesion and migration of endothelial cells(ECs) and the expression of focal adhesion proteins vinculin, talin and paxillin. Scratch wound migration assay was performed to examine the effect of FAK inhibitor with 50nmol/mL on ECs migration at 0, 5, 10, 30, 60 and 120min, respectively. And immunofluorescence analysis was performed to detect the expression of F-actin in ECs treated with FAK inhibitor within 2h. Western blot was carried out to determine the effect of FAK inhibitor on expression of vinculin, talin and paxillin proteins. The results showed that the migration distance and the expression of F-actin in ECs treated with FAK inhibitor decreased significantly compared with that of the controls, and the level of vinculin showed no significant difference with increasing of treated time of FAK inhibitor. However, the talin and paxillin showed an identical decreasing tendency in 5-10min, but slowly going up in 30min and then after subsequently decreasing. The results of this study proved that blocking phosphorylation of FAK could inhibit VECs adhesion and migration by downregulating focal adhesion proteins so that it may inhibit tumor angiogenesis. This may provide a new approach for tumor therapy.