Peripheral positioning of lysosomes supports melanoma aggressiveness

Emerging evidences suggest that both function and position of organelles are pivotal for tumor cell dissemination. Among them, lysosomes stand out as they integrate metabolic sensing with gene regulation and secretion of proteases. Yet, how lysosomes function is linked to their position and thereby control metastatic progression remains elusive. Here, we analyzed lysosome subcellular distribution in micropatterned patient-derived melanoma cells and found that lysosome spreading scales with their aggressiveness. Peripheral lysosomes promote invadopodia-based matrix degradation and invasion of melanoma cells which is directly linked to their lysosomal and cell transcriptional programs. When controlling lysosomal positioning using chemo-genetical heterodimerization in melanoma cells, we demonstrated that perinuclear clustering impairs lysosomal secretion, matrix degradation and invasion. Impairing lysosomal spreading in a zebrafish metastasis model significantly reduces invasive outgrowth. Our study provides a mechanistic demonstration that lysosomal positioning controls cell invasion, illustrating the importance of organelle adaptation in carcinogenesis.