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MINI REVIEW article

Front. Cell Dev. Biol.
Sec. Membrane Traffic and Organelle Dynamics
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fcell.2024.1491304
This article is part of the Research Topic Reviews and Advances in the Membrane Trafficking of Cancer View all articles

Trafficking in cancer: from gene deregulation to altered organelles and emerging biophysical properties.

Provisionally accepted
Julie Patat Julie Patat 1,2,3Kristine Schauer Kristine Schauer 1,2,3,4*Hugo Lachuer Hugo Lachuer 5
  • 1 Institut Gustave Roussy, Villejuif, Île-de-France, France
  • 2 U1279, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM), Paris, Île-de-France, France
  • 3 Université Paris-Saclay, Saint Aubin, France
  • 4 Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris, France
  • 5 UMR7592 Institut Jacques Monod (IJM), Paris, Île-de-France, France

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Intracellular trafficking supports all cell functions maintaining the exchange of material between membrane-bound organelles and the plasma membrane during endocytosis, cargo sorting, and exocytosis/secretion. Several proteins of the intracellular trafficking machinery are deregulated in diseases, particularly cancer. This complex and deadly disease stays a heavy burden for society, despite years of intense research activity. Here, we give an overview about trafficking proteins and highlight that in addition to their molecular functions, they contribute to the emergence of intracellular organelle landscapes. We review recent evidence of organelle landscape alterations in cancer. We argue that focusing on organelles, which represent the higher-order, cumulative behavior of trafficking regulators, could help to better understand, describe and fight cancer. In particular, we propose adopting a physical framework to describe the organelle landscape, with the goal of identifying the key parameters that are crucial for a stable and non-random organelle organization characteristic of healthy cells. By understanding these parameters, we may gain insights into the mechanisms that lead to a pathological organelle spatial organization, which could help explain the plasticity of cancer cells.

    Keywords: Organelle distribution, self-organization, non-random positioning, Non-Equilibrium Steady-State (NESS), Lysosomes

    Received: 04 Sep 2024; Accepted: 10 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Patat, Schauer and Lachuer. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Kristine Schauer, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris, France

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.