RNA-Seq quantitative analysis of the regulation of platelet-derived extracellular vesicles on NPC cells transcriptomes

Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is a malignant epithelial tumor with a high metastatic feature and invasive nature. The survival rate of NPC patients is still very low due to the high incidence of distant metastasis. Platelets are versatile blood cells and mediate the distant metastasis of tumor cells via the blood circulation. However, the role and underlying mechanism of platelets responsible for the NPC cells hematogenous metastasis are not well understood. In our study, we found that platelet-derived EVs of NPC patients (P-EVs) induced the metastasis and mesenchymal-epithelial transition process in NPC cells. To shed light on the mechanism underlying P-EVs-induced NPC metastasis and MET process, we performed high throughput RNA-Seq analyses to reveal the differentially expressed genes in NPC cells treated with or without P-EVs. We observed that there was a significant overlap in the expression of integrins that were altered in 6-10B and 5-8F upon P-EVs treatment. Of these, integrin β3 (ITGB3) exhibited the most obvious upregulation. Examination of P-EVs treated 6-10B and 5-8F cells and untreated 6-10B and 5-8F control group