Down-regulation of layilin, a novel hyaluronan receptor, via RNA interference, inhibits invasion and lymphatic metastasis of human lung A549 cells.

Human lung carcinoma is a highly metastatic tumour that leads to a high death rate and in which lymphatic metastasis is an important early event. HYA (hyaluronan) is involved in the invasion of a variety of tumour cells. Layilin, a specific and novel HYA receptor, was detected in the human lung cell line A549 in our preliminary research, and was hypothesized to play an essential role in cell motility and tumour lymphatic metastasis. In the present study we found that, as expected, suppression of layilin expression by RNA interference significantly inhibited A549-cell invasion and migration in vitro and lymphatic metastasis in vivo and thereby resulted in the increased survival of tumour-bearing mice. These findings suggested that layilin might play crucial roles in lymphatic metastasis of lung carcinoma and that suppression of layilin expression might be a promising strategy for treatment of human lung carcinoma.