Autophagy inactivation in osteosarcoma leads to the appearance of poor prognosis-associated factors

Osteosarcoma (OS) is a bone cancer exhibiting a 20% survival rate for metastatic patients, which motivates the development of new therapeutic options. Among the various new treatment approaches, modulation of autophagy is the subject of rising interest. In addition to its pro-survival role in established tumors, autophagy recently emerged as an active player in the crosstalk between tumor and stromal cells. In OS, although the knockdown of key autophagy genes in human cell lines demonstrates a protumoral role of autophagy, the analysis of patient tumors indicates that lack of LC3-positive punctae at resection following neoadjuvant chemotherapy is a poor prognostic marker, suggesting that loss of autophagy is not detrimental for the tumor. In the present work, we analyzed the consequences of autophagy inactivation in OS cells both on tumor development and on bone microenvironment in an orthotopic syngeneic model. We found that inactivation of the autophagy-essential gene Atg5 in OS cells decreases their tumorigenic properties in vitro. However, these effects were no longer observed in vivo, likely due to microenvironment modifications such as overexpression of the major OS-promoting factor TGF-β or increased infiltration of Foxp3-positive and CD31-positive cells in Atg5 KO tumors. In addition, autophagy-deficient tumor cells stimulate the in vitro formation of osteoclast, the cells in charge of bone resorption which can release bone matrix-embedded growth factors thereby stimulating tumor growth. Taken together, these results suggest that Atg5 inactivation in OS cells is associated with microenvironment modifications known as poor prognosis-associated factors in OS, and could thus balance the negative cell-autonomous effects of autophagy suppression. Abbreviations: ACTB -β-actin; Atg -autophagy-related; Baf-A1 - Bafilomycin-A1; CSC -cancer stem cells; Col1A -type 1a collagen; d -day; HBSS -Hank's balanced salt solution; LC3 -microtubule-associated protein 1 light chain 3 protein; SQSTM1/p62 -sequestosome; OB -osteoblast; OC -osteoclast; OS -osteosarcoma; TEM -transmission electron microscopy; TGF-β -transforming growth factor β; TRAP -acid phosphatase 5, tartrate-resistant.