Breast cancer is the most lethal malignancy in women. N-acetylgalactosaminyltransferase 6 (GALNT6) is an enzyme which mediates the initial step of mucin-type O-glycosylation, and has been reported to be involved in mammary carcinogenesis. However, the molecular mechanism of GALNT6 in breast cancer metastasis has not been fully explored. In this study, based on online database analyses and tissue microarrays, the overall survival (OS) of breast cancer patients with high expression of GALNT6 was found to be shorter than those with low expression of GALNT6. Also, high GALNT6 expression was positively correlated with advanced pN stage and pTNM stage. GALNT6 was shown to be able to promote the migration and invasion of breast cancer cells, and enhance the level of mucin-type O-glycosylation of substrates in the supernatants of breast cancer cells. Qualitative mucin-type glycosylomics analysis identified α2M as a novel substrate of GALNT6. Further investigation showed that GALNT6 increased O-glycosylation of α2M, and the following activation of the downstream PI3K/Akt signaling pathway was involved in the promotion of migration and invasion of breast cancer cells. This study identified a new substrate of GALNT6 and provides novel understanding of the role of GALNT6 in promoting metastasis and poor prognosis in breast cancer.
Keywords: GALNT6; O-glycosylation; breast cancer; metastasis; α2M.