RAGE Up-Regulation Differently Affects Cell Proliferation and Migration in Pancreatic Cancer Cells

The receptor for advanced glycation end products (RAGE) contributes to many cellular aspects of pancreatic cancer including cell proliferation, migration, and survival. Studies have shown that RAGE activation by its ligands promotes pancreatic tumor growth by stimulating both cell proliferation and migration. In this study, we investigated the effect of RAGE up-regulation on the proliferation and migration of the human pancreatic cancer Panc-1 cell-line. We show that moderate overexpression of RAGE in Panc-1 cells results in increased cell proliferation, but decreased cell migration. The observed cellular changes were confirmed to be RAGE-specific and reversible by using RAGE-specific siRNAs and the small molecule RAGE inhibitor FPS-ZM1. At the molecular level, we show that RAGE up-regulation was associated with decreased activity of FAK, Akt, Erk1/2, and NF-κB signaling pathways and greatly reduced levels of α2 and β1 integrin expression, which is in agreement with the observed decreases in cell migration. We also demonstrate that RAGE up-regulation changes the expression of key molecular markers of epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT). Our results suggest that in the absence of stimulation by external ligands, RAGE up-regulation can differently modulate cell proliferation and migration in pancreatic cancer cells and regulates partly EMT.