Reprogramming of lipid metabolism in cancer-associated fibroblasts potentiates migration of colorectal cancer cells

TLDR

Metabolic interactions between cancer‑associated fibroblasts and colorectal cancer cells drive tumor progression, yet the role of CAF lipid reprogramming in metastasis remains poorly understood. Conditioned medium from CAFs, enriched in fatty acids and phospholipids, enhances colorectal cancer cell migration, an effect that is abrogated by silencing CAF FASN or blocking CRC fatty‑acid uptake via CD36, highlighting these molecules as potential anti‑metastatic targets.

Abstract

Abstract Metabolic interaction between cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) and colorectal cancer (CRC) cells plays a major role in CRC progression. However, little is known about lipid alternations in CAFs and how these metabolic reprogramming affect CRC cells metastasis. Here, we uncover CAFs conditioned medium (CM) promote the migration of CRC cells compared with normal fibroblasts CM. CAFs undergo a lipidomic reprogramming, and accumulate more fatty acids and phospholipids. CAFs CM after protein deprivation still increase the CRC cells migration, which suggests small molecular metabolites in CAFs CM are responsible for CRC cells migration. Then, we confirm that CRC cells take up the lipids metabolites that are secreted from CAFs. Fatty acids synthase (FASN), a crucial enzyme in fatty acids synthesis, is significantly increased in CAFs. CAFs-induced CRC cell migration is abolished by knockdown of FASN by siRNA or reducing the uptake of fatty acids by CRC cells by sulfo-N-succinimidyloleate sodium in vitro and CD36 monoclonal antibody in vivo. To conclude, our results provide a new insight into the mechanism of CRC metastasis and suggest FASN of CAFs or CD36 of CRC cells may be potential targets for anti-metastasis treatment in the future.