Sortilin is a key component of exosome biogenesis
Unprecedented reports have found that sortilin expres-sion level is associated to different types of cancer.24-26
Some of these studies have implicated that sortilin could play a role in the tumorigenesis process.24,26 Our team
has been interested in these links between sortilin and cancer and at the same time the cross-talk between the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and tyrosine kinase receptor (Trk) signaling pathways.13 We have dis-covered that sortilin can form a novel complex with TrkB and EGFR found in exosomes that are released from lung cancer cells conveying a microenvironmental control upon endothelial cells.39 In this study, we exam-ined closely the secretion mechanism utilized for the extracellular domain of sortilin from human lung cancer cells (A549) and the effect on the microenvironment. We show for the first time that sortilin uses a ‘canonical pathway’ and can be found in exosomes. We demon-strate that sortilin is a key component of exosomes medi-ating communication between A549 and endothelial cells (Figure 2). Sortilin is already known to play a prime function in cancer cells; however we have reported herein that it plays a new role in both the assembly of a tyrosine kinase complex and its exosome release. This novel complex called ‘TES’ complex expressed by exo-somes results in the linkage of two tyrosine kinase recep-tors, TrkB and EGFR with sortilin. We demonstrate in this study that the TES complex coveys a control on the microenvironment i.e. endothelial cells and initiates the activation of angiogenesis via exosome transfer. There-fore, our data suggested that sortilin and its partners have a paracrine through exosome transfer and control of the microenvironment. This novel complex contain-ing sortilin could play the role as a molecular switch in cancer progression by promoting angiogenesis.