Candidate Antimetastasis Drugs Suppress the Metastatic Capacity of Breast Cancer Cells by Reducing Membrane Fluidity

Weina Zhao, Sara Prijic, Bettina C Urban, Michael J Tisza, Yan Zuo, Lin Li, Zhi Tan, Xiaoling Chen, Sendurai A Mani, Jeffrey T Chang

Despite the high mortality from metastatic cancer, therapeutic targets to prevent metastasis are limited. Efforts to identify genetic aberrations that predispose tumors to metastasis have been mostly unsuccessful. To understand the nature of candidate targets for metastatic disease, we performed an in silico screen to identify drugs that can inhibit a gene expression signature associated with epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT). Compounds discovered through this method, including those previously identified, appeared to restrict metastatic capacity through a common mechanism, the ability to modulate the fluidity of cell membranes. Treatment of breast cancer cell lines with the putative anti-metastasis agents reduced membrane fluidity, resulting in decreased cell motility, stem cell-like properties, and EMT in vitro, and the drugs also inhibited spontaneous metastasis in vivo. When fluidity was unchanged, the anti-metastasis compounds could no longer restrict metastasis, indicating a causal association between fluidity and metastasis. We further demonstrate that fluidity can be regulated by cellular cholesterol flux, as the cholesterol efflux channel, ABCA1, potentiated metastatic behaviors in vitro and in vivo. The requirement for fluidity was further supported by the finding in breast cancer patients that ABCA1 was overexpressed in 41% of metastatic tumors, reducing time to metastasis by nine years. Collectively, our findings reveal increased membrane fluidity as a necessary cellular feature of metastatic potential that can be controlled by many currently available drugs, offering a viable therapeutic opportunity to prevent cancer metastasis.