N-glycosylation of mouse TRAIL-R and human TRAIL-R1 enhances TRAIL-induced death.

APO2L/TRAIL (TNF-related apoptosis-inducing ligand) induces death of tumor cells through two agonist receptors, TRAIL-R1 and TRAIL-R2. We demonstrate here that N-linked glycosylation (N-glyc) plays also an important regulatory role for TRAIL-R1-mediated and mouse TRAIL receptor (mTRAIL-R)-mediated apoptosis, but not for TRAIL-R2, which is devoid of N-glycans. Cells expressing N-glyc-defective mutants of TRAIL-R1 and mouse TRAIL-R were less sensitive to TRAIL than their wild-type counterparts. Defective apoptotic signaling by N-glyc-deficient TRAIL receptors was associated with lower TRAIL receptor aggregation and reduced DISC formation, but not with reduced TRAIL-binding affinity. Our results also indicate that TRAIL receptor N-glyc impacts immune evasion strategies. The cytomegalovirus (CMV) UL141 protein, which restricts cell-surface expression of human TRAIL death receptors, binds with significant higher affinity TRAIL-R1 lacking N-glyc, suggesting that this sugar modification may have evolved as a counterstrategy to prevent receptor inhibition by UL141. Altogether our findings demonstrate that N-glyc of TRAIL-R1 promotes TRAIL signaling and restricts virus-mediated inhibition.

Nanovectorization of TRAIL with single wall carbon nanotubes enhances tumor cell killing.

Tumor necrosis factor-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL or Apo2L) is a member of the tumor necrosis factor (TNF) superfamily. This type II transmembrane protein is able to bound specifically to cancer cell receptors (i.e., TRAIL-R1 (or DR4) and TRAIL-R2 (or DR5)) and to induce apoptosis without being toxic for healthy cells. Because membrane-bound TRAIL induces stronger receptor aggregation and apoptosis than soluble TRAIL, we proposed here to vectorize TRAIL using single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) to mimic membrane TRAIL. Owing to their exceptional and revolutional properties, carbon nanotubes, especially SWCNTs, are used in a wide range of physical or, now, medical applications. Indeed due to their high mechanical resistance, their high flexibility and their hydrophobicity, SWCNTs are known to rapidly diffuse in an aqueous medium such as blood, opening the way of development of new drug nanovectors (or nanocarriers). Our TRAIL-based SWCNTs nanovectors proved to be more efficient than TRAIL alone death receptors in triggering cancer cell killing. These NPTs increased TRAIL pro-apoptotic potential by nearly 20-fold in different Human tumor cell lines including colorectal, nonsmall cell lung cancer, or hepatocarcinomas. We provide thus a proof-of-concept that TRAIL nanovector derivatives based on SWCNT may be useful to future nanomedicine therapies.