Circulating Microvesicles from Pancreatic Cancer Accelerate the Migration and Proliferation of PANC-1 Cells

Circulating microvesicles are able to mediate long-distance cell–cell communications. It is essential to understand how microvesicles from pancreatic cancer act on other cells in the body. In this work, serum-derived microvesicles were isolated from 10 patients with locally advanced pancreatic cancer and healthy controls. Using Cell Transwell and WST-1 reagents, we found that microvesicles from pancreatic cancer accelerated migration and proliferation of PANC-1 cells. Meanwhile, the proliferation of these cancer-microvesicle-treated cells (CMTCs) was affected less by 10 μM of gemcitabine relative to healthy microvesicle-treated cells (HMTCs). Next, we optimized the filter-aided sample preparation method to increase the recovery of protein samples and then applied it to the quantification of the proteome of CMTCs and HMTCs. The peptides were labeled and analyzed by liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry. In total, 4102 proteins were identified, where 35 proteins were up-regulated with 27 down-regulated in CMTCs. We verified the quantitative results of three key proteins CD44, PPP2R1A, and TP53 by Western blot. The Ingenuity Pathway Analysis revealed pathways that cancer microvesicles might participate in to promote cell migration and proliferation. These findings may provide novel clues of treatment for tumorigenesis and metastasis.