Heparanase Contributes To Trans-Endothelial Migration of Hepatocellular Carcinoma Cells

The overall outcome of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is still very poor due to its high metastasis and recurrence rate. During metastasis, trans-endothelial migration (TEM) of HCC cells is a key step. Heparanase (HPSE) is an endo-beta-glucuronidase and exerts prometastatic properties for normal and tumor-derived cells. However, it is remains unclear that HPSE contributes to TEM of HCC cells. In this study, human umbilical vein endothelial cells-C (HUVEC-C) was used to simulate vascular endothelial cells (VECs), and the HCCLM3 cells with high HPSE expression were chosen and used for in vitro TEM assay and in vivo experiment. As results, we found that HCCLM3 cells showed higher TEM rate compared with other HCC cells. Downregulation or inhibition of HPSE activity resulted in suppression of TEM of HCC cells both in vitro and in vivo. Our findings suggest that HPSE contributes to TEM of HCC cells, which may be a new biological function of HPSE.