Abstract 1621: SRGAP2 expression levels may induce a biphasic metastatic phenotype in osteosarcoma cell lines

Abstract The purpose of this study is to characterize the role of Slit-Robo GTPase-Activating Protein 2 (SRGAP2) in osteosarcoma (OS) metastasis. OS is the most common primary bone tumor and the eighth leading pediatric cancer. Despite combined therapies, treatment failure is experienced within 5 years of diagnosis by over 40% of patients, generally due to metastatic disease. Using the conditional Sleeping Beauty transposon mutagenesis system, our laboratory recently identified candidate tumor promoting genes in transgenic mice that develop OS, including the potential tumor suppressor SRGAP2 involved in regulating actin dynamics. We hypothesized that loss of SRGAP2 would increase the metastatic potential of OS cell lines in vitro and in vivo, whereas gain would decrease metastatic potential. Gene expression was amplified with a stably integrated, tetracycline-inducible over expression vector containing SRGAP2 cDNA and gene silencing was accomplished with a clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR) targeting the gene. Studies were conducted in the well-characterized murine osteosarcoma cell lines K12 and its more aggressive derivative K7M2 and human osteosarcoma cell lines HOS and its more aggressive derivative 143B. Compared to luciferase-controls, overexpression and knockout of SRGAP2 had no effect on cell proliferation in K12, K7M2, HOS, and 143B (n = 4). A reduction of soft agar colony formation was observed in knockout cell lines but not in cell lines with SRGAP2 overexpression for K12 and 143B (n = 3); HOS cell lines did not form colonies in soft agar. Interestingly, overexpression of SRGAP2 decreased wound-healing closure in 143B and K12 lines, but increased closure time in HOS (n = 4). Tail vein injections in NRG mice are currently being investigated. Overexpression of SRGAP2 in K12 decreased development of macrometastases in lungs, whereas knockout of SRGAP2 eliminated gross detection of lung masses (n = 3). Future studies include imaging fixed cells to determine if SRGAP2 knockout and overexpression affects cell morphology and completing studies with K7M2 lines. These results suggest that SRGAP2 has a biphasic phenotype in osteosarcoma cell lines, with an optima in expression for efficient metastasis. It's dual role of deforming cell membranes independent of its ability to activate Rac GTPases and alter actin dynamics may be responsible for the observed results. Citation Format: Tracy Marko, Ghaidan Shamsan, David Largaespada. SRGAP2 expression levels may induce a biphasic metastatic phenotype in osteosarcoma cell lines. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 107th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2016 Apr 16-20; New Orleans, LA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2016;76(14 Suppl):Abstract nr 1621.