Skip to main page content
U.S. flag
See More

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 1998 Aug 7;94(3):353-62.
doi: 10.1016/s0092-8674(00)81478-6.

Requirement for specific proteases in cancer cell intravasation as revealed by a novel semiquantitative PCR-based assay

J Kim  1 , W Yu, K Kovalski, L Ossowski
Affiliations
Free article

Requirement for specific proteases in cancer cell intravasation as revealed by a novel semiquantitative PCR-based assay

J Kim et al. Cell. .
Free article

Abstract

Proteases are crucial for cancer metastasis, but due to lack of assays, their role in intravasation has not yet been tested. We have developed a human Alu sequence PCR-based assay to quantitate intravasated cells in an in vivo model. We demonstrated that metalloproteinases (MMPs), and most likely MMP-9, are required for intravasation by showing that marimastat, an inhibitor of MMPs, reduced intravasation by more than 90%, and that only tumor cell lines expressing MMP-9 intravasated. Cells with low surface urokinase plasminogen activator (uPA) and uPA receptor (uPAR) were also incapable of intravasation, despite the presence of high levels of MMP-9. We concluded that breaching of the vascular wall is a rate-limiting step for intravasation, and consequently for metastasis, and that cooperation between uPA/uPAR and MMP-9 is required to complete this step.

PubMed Disclaimer

Publication types

MeSH terms

LinkOut - more resources