Aiming for invadopodia: organizing polarized delivery at sites of invasion

摘要: Recent years have witnessed growing interest in the biology of invadopodia, proteolytically active protrusions formed by invasive tumor cells when cultured on an extracellular matrix (ECM). Although substantial progress has been made towards defining their basic elements and features, need remains to understand how these components are recruited and, ultimately, ECM degradation is so precisely localized. According recent evidence, invadopodia raft-like membrane domains where cholesterol levels tightly regulated, transport protease-delivering carriers required for function. On this basis we hypothesize that correct delivery cargo ensured a polarized, cholesterol-dependent trafficking mechanism, similar apical domain epithelial cells.