Proteomic Analysis of Two Metabolic Proteins with Potential to Translocate to Plasma Membrane Associated with Tumor Metastasis Development and Drug Targets

Metastasis is the main cause for death of breast cancer patients. However, the underlying mechanism is still poorly understood. Plasma membrane (PM) proteins play a key role in various biological processes, especially for cell migration. In this study, we used a set of well-characterized mammary mouse cell lines, 67NR, 168FARN, 4T1, representing the metastatic progression, to study the differentially expressed membrane proteins. These proteins were analyzed by a linear ion trap tandem mass spectrometry (LTQ-MS/MS) following cell surface biotinylation and streptavidin purification. A total of 1667 membrane proteins were identified, out of which 472 were characterized as differentially expressed with at least 2-fold change and p-value < 0.01. Functional clustering of the 472 proteins revealed that 178 of them were metabolic proteins. Finally, we focused on two metabolic proteins, fatty acid synthase (FASN) and NAD­(P)H steroid dehydrogenase-like protein (NSDHL), which were validated by Western blot and immunofluorescence. We found that FASN and NSDHL translocated to the plasma membrane from the intracellular compartment, and their expressions increased from 67NR to 4T1. This alteration of localization along with differential expressions might be necessary for metastasis development. Potentially, FASN and NSDHL could serve as drug targets in new antimetastasis therapy.