Significance
Regulation of the proliferation and invasion of cancer cells is important in cancer treatment. ADAM12 has been found to play important roles in regulating these processes and identification of its interacting partners will improve our understanding of its biological functions and provide basis for functional modulation. Through mass spectrometry-based quantitative proteomic approaches, we identify the interacting partners for ADAM12 in a human cancer cell line and find many proteins that are involved in the proliferation and invasion of cancer cells. A novel regulator, myoferlin, of ADAM12 is discovered and this protein increases ADAM12 expression level, stability, and its enzymatic activity, leading to the reduction of its substrate, E-cadherin, which plays important roles in the regulation of cell adhesion and tumor metastasis. This result provides a connection for two highly expressed proteins in cancer cells and may shed light on the regulation of their biological functions in cancer progression.