Fas signaling in thyroid carcinomas is diverted from apoptosis to proliferation

The death receptor Fas is present in thyroid carcinomas, yet fails to trigger apoptosis. Interestingly, Fas has been reported to be actually overexpressed in papillary thyroid carcinomas, suggesting that it may confer a survival advantage.

We investigated the expression and activation status of Fas pathway mediators in thyroid carcinoma cell lines and tumor specimens.

All cell lines tested express Fas-associated death domain, procaspase-8, procaspase-9, and procaspase-3; resistance to Fas-mediated apoptosis could not be attributed to lack of any of these apoptosis mediators. Moreover, Fas death domain mutations were not found in our study. The proteasome inhibitors MG132 and PS-341 (bortezomib, Velcade), which lead to accumulation of the nuclear factor kappaB (NF-kappaB) inhibitor IkappaB, did not sensitize SW579 cells to Fas-mediated apoptosis, suggesting that resistance to Fas-mediated apoptosis is not due to proteasome or NF-kappaB activity. Cross-linking of Fas in vitro induced recruitment of Fas-associated death domain-like interleukin-1beta-converting enzyme inhibitory protein (FLIP) instead of procaspase-8. Inhibition of FLIP expression with a FLIP antisense oligonucleotide resulted in significant sensitization to Fas-mediated apoptosis. Fas cross-linking promoted BrdUrd incorporation; activated the mitogen-activated protein kinase/extracellular signal-regulated kinase kinase/extracellular signal-regulated kinase, NF-kappaB, and activator protein-1 pathways in thyroid carcinoma cells in vitro; and protected cells from tumor necrosis factor-related apoptosis-inducing ligand-induced apoptosis. We also found that good prognosis papillary thyroid carcinoma specimens exhibited higher immunoreactivity for cleaved (activated) caspase-8 than poor prognosis tumors.

In thyroid carcinomas, the proteolytic cleavage and activation of caspase-8 depends on the balance between expression levels for procaspase-8 and FLIP and correlates with favorable clinical prognosis. Fas may actually stimulate proliferation and confer a survival advantage to thyroid cancer cells.