All routinely used reagents were purchased from Sigma unless otherwise stated. Cell culture reagents were purchased from Lonza (Slough, UK). Cell Extraction Buffer and Elisa (pFAK) kit were purchased from Invitrogen (Paisley, UK) along with lipofectamine and BCECF reagent (2979-bis-(2-carboxyethyl)-5-(and6)-carboxyfluorescein). Roche (Welwyn, UK) supplied protease inhibitor tablets. Fluorescent ACE2 substrate Mca-APK-Dpn was supplied by Enzo (Exeter, UK) and MTS reagent by Promega (Southampton, UK). Secondary antibodies, the chemiluminescence system used and Protein G Sepharose 4 fast flow were supplied by GE healthcare (Chalfont St. Giles, UK). DTBP (Dimethyl 3,39dithiobispropionimidate) was purchased from Pierce (Cramlington, UK). The ACE2 inhibitor 416F2 [53] was a generous gift from Prof V. Dive (CEA, Gif sur Yvette, France). Polyclonal ACE2 antibody raised in goat was purchased from R&D systems (Abingdon, UK). Integrin antibodies raised in mice against ITGB1 and ITGA5 antibodies were bought from Santa Cruz Biotech (Heidelberg, Germany). Polyclonal ADAM17 antibody raised in rabbit was purchased from Calbiochem (Nottingham, UK), while Akt antibody raised in rabbit was purchased from Cell Signaling (Hertfordshire, UK). Purified ACE enzyme was a kind gift from Prof N. Hooper (The University of Leeds, UK) and Prof S. Danilov (University of Illinois at Chicago, USA) generously provided the ACE monoclonal antibody [54, 55] .