Cell surface expression of alpha-enolase, a glycolytic enzyme displaying moonlighting activities, has been shown to contribute to the motility and invasiveness of cancer cells through the protein nonenzymatic function of binding plasminogen and enhancing plasmin formation. Although a few recent records indicate the involvement of protein partners in the localization of alpha-enolase to the plasma membrane, the cellular mechanisms underlying surface exposure remain largely elusive. Searching for novel interactors and signalling pathways, we used low-metastatic breast cancer cells, a doxorubicinresistant counterpart and a non-tumourigenic mammary epithelial cell line. Here, we demonstrate by a combination of experimental approaches that epidermal growth factor (EGF) exposure, like lipopolysaccharide (LPS) exposure, promotes the surface expression of alpha-enolase. We also establish Heat shock protein 70 (Hsp70), a multifunctional chaperone distributed in intracellular, plasma membrane and extracellular compartments, as a novel alpha-enolase interactor and demonstrate a functional involvement of Hsp70 in the surface localization of alpha-enolase. Our results contribute to shedding light on the control of surface expression of alpha-enolase in non-tumourigenic and cancer cells and suggest novel targets to counteract the metastatic potential of tumours.An increasing number of proteins are being identified as multifunctional 1 . Most of these are enzymes, which in addition to their catalytic function are involved in fully unrelated processes, such as the glycolytic enzyme alpha-enolase, which was one of the first moonlighting proteins to be identified 2 . Multiple subcellular localizations characterize alpha-enolase, which functions as a plasminogen receptor when localized on the cell surface, and available data have demonstrated its interaction with plasminogen in prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells 3 . Mammalian tumour cells use the activation of plasminogen in plasmin to invade tissue and form metastases 4 . Recently, researchers have linked both pericellular plasminogen activation and cell surface alpha-enolase to migration and invasion in lung and pancreatic cancer, and these studies have proposed targeting cancer cells with specific anti-alpha-enolase antibodies as a promising approach to suppress tumour metastasis 5,6 . Due to the large interest in novel therapeutic strategies to counteract cancer spreading, stimuli and signalling pathways that can cooperate to induce the surface localization of alpha-enolase are attractive objects of study.Increased expression of surface alpha-enolase following LPS exposure was originally reported for the U937 macrophage cell line and human blood monocytes 7 . LPS, a component of the outer membrane of Gram-negative bacteria, exerts its biological effects by binding to Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4), a recognition receptor of the innate immune system. Some evidence shows that functional TLR4 receptors are expressed on a variety of tumours, including breast cancer, where the silencing...