1Research, 2Anesthesiology, and 3Medicine Services, Department of Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System, San Diego 92161; and Departments of 4Anesthesiology and 5Medicine, University of California-San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093
Submitted 24 June 2004 ; accepted in final form 24 July 2004
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ABSTRACT |
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caspases; cell surface receptors; growth substances; signal transduction
A recent study (11) reported that the PTHrP-derived peptide PTHrP-(140173) exerts regulatory effects on lung cancer cell apoptosis. Pretreatment with 100 nM PTHrP-(140173) for 24 h protected BEN human squamous lung carcinoma cells from the apoptotic effects of ultraviolet (UV)-B irradiation or activating Fas antibody (11). The protective effects were marked by decreased cell death, decreased activation of caspase-3, -8, and -9, decreased nuclear condensation and apoptotic body formation, and increased survival in a clonogenic survival assay. Thus the peptide protected the lung cancer cells against caspase-8-mediated apoptosis, although mechanisms were not established. PTHrP-(134) also reduced caspase-3 activation and DNA fragmentation after UV irradiation. However, the amino-terminal peptide did not reduce caspase-8 activity or increase clonogenic survival, casting doubt on its role as an antiapoptotic agent for the lung cancer cells. The finding that PTHrP-(140173) had antiapoptotic effects was novel. Aside from preliminary observations in prostate cancer (2), the only other known biological function of PTHrP-(140173) is to decrease pyrophosphate levels and inhibit collagen synthesis in cultured rabbit articular chondrocytes (8). Because recognition of physiological activity is so recent, comprehensive investigation has not yet occurred and a receptor for this particular PTHrP peptide has not been identified.
The signaling pathways mediating the antiapoptotic effects of PTHrP-(140173) in lung cancer cells are unknown, but either protein kinase A (PKA) or protein kinase C (PKC) can protect cells from apoptosis (9, 10, 24, 26). Thus this study investigated the role of signaling pathways in the antiapoptotic effects of PTHrP peptides in lung cancer cells. Our aims were to compare PTHrP-(134) and PTHrP-(140173) for activation of PKA and PKC, to test whether second messenger pathway inhibitors block the effects of PTHrP-(140173), and to determine the effects of signal transduction pathway activation on sensitivity of the cells to apoptosis.
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METHODS |
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The PTHrP peptides were purchased from Bachem (Torrance, CA). All other chemicals were obtained from Sigma (St. Louis, MO) unless otherwise specified.
Cell Culture
BEN squamous lung cancer cells (a gift of T. J. Martin, University of Melbourne) were plated in 100-mm dishes and grown in RPMI 1640 medium supplemented with 10% fetal calf serum and 2 mM glutamine at 37°C in an atmosphere of 5% CO2-95% air.
Cell Treatments
Experiments were conducted with cells at 6070% confluence. The PKA inhibitor H89 (0.055 µM) was incubated with cells for 30 min before other treatments or exposure to UV irradiation. Agonists, including 0.110 µM forskolin, 1 µM 3-isobutyl-1-methylxanthine (IBMX), 10 µM 8-(4-chlorophenylthio)adenosine 3',5'-cyclic monophosphate (CPT-cAMP), 100 nM phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate (PMA), 0.1 µM ATP, 100 nM PTHrP-(134), and 100 nM PTHrP-(140173), were applied to cells 10 min before UV irradiation.
Second Messenger Assays
cAMP and inositol phosphates were measured with protocols described previously (12). Cells were washed twice with PBS and incubated for 30 min in serum-free medium before application of agonists. Cells were incubated for 15 min with 100 nM PTHrP-(134) or 100 nM PTHrP-(140173) to assess effects on cAMP production. Cells were lysed and extracts were assayed for cAMP with the reagents and instruction in the Delphi kit (PerkinElmer Biosciences, Branchburg, NY). Positive controls included cells treated with 1 µM IBMX or 100 µM forskolin plus IBMX. To assay inositol phosphate production, cells were loaded for 18 h with [3H]-myo-inositol (Perkin- Elmer, Boston, MA) and then treated for 10 min with 100 nM PTHrP-(134) or PTHrP-(140173). Inositol phosphates were separated from precursor by ion exchange chromatography and measured by scintillation counting. Cells treated with 0.1 µM ATP served as positive controls.
UV Irradiation
Apoptosis experiments used cells in growth medium with serum. Apoptosis was induced by irradiation with 0.9 J/cm2 UV-B administered over 30 min as previously described (11). Cells were studied after 24 h recovery in growth medium.
Caspase-3 Assays
Adherent cells were washed once in PBS, scraped from the plate, pooled with the nonadherent cells from the same wells, lysed by sonication in caspase lysis buffer [50 mM PIPES-KOH, 2 mM EDTA, 0.1% (wt/vol) 3-[(3-cholamidopropyl)dimethylammonio]-1-propanesulfonate (CHAPS), 1 mM dithiothreitol, 1 µM leupeptin and pepstatin A], and frozen at 20°C until time of assay. Caspase-3 activity was measured in cell lysates by a fluorescent substrate assay in a 96-well plate format as described previously (11). The mass of cell protein for each sample was adjusted to 20 µg, measured by the Pierce bicinchoninic acid (BCA) protein assay. The substrate was acetyl-aspartyl-glutamyl-valyl-aspartyl-7-amino-4-methyl-coumarin (AMC). Activities were calculated as the slope of the plot of relative fluorescent units (fluorescence background in arbitrary units) vs. time over the first 12 h, the linear portion of the curve.
Flow Cytometry
Pellets containing 3 x 106 cells were fixed in an equal volume of 100% ethanol, resuspended in a solution of 50 µg/ml propidium iodide and 1.3 mg/ml RNase in PBS, and analyzed on a Coulter Elite flow cytometer (Beckman Coulter Electronics, Miami, FL). Cell fractions in G0/G1, S, and G2/M phase were determined from histograms of propidium iodide fluorescence with Multicycle software (Phoenix Flow Systems, San Diego, CA). Cells whose propidium iodide fluorescence was less than the lower limit of the G0/G1 peak, assessed in cells that were not irradiated, were considered apoptotic on the basis of their subdiploid DNA content.
Fluorescent Microscopy
BEN cells in 60-mm dishes were fixed with 100% methanol, stained with 4 µM Hoescht 33342 dye (Calbiochem, San Diego, CA) to label nuclei fluorescently, and coverslipped. Cells were imaged with a Nikon Eclipse TE300 inverted microscope (Nikon USA, Melville, NY) at x400 magnification with a Plan Fluorite objective lens, numerical aperture 0.75. Hoescht 33342 was excited with light from a 100-W mercury lamp passing through a UV-2EC filter, giving wavelengths of 340380 nm, and the emitted light was collected through a 435- to 485-nm barrier filter. Digital images were captured with a Spot Slider2 Camera, model 1.4.0, operated with Spot Software Version 2.2.2 (Diagnostic Instruments, Sterling Heights, MI) and saved as 12-bit (the standard format for the Spot camera) grayscale TIFF files at 1,600 x 1,200 pixels. The optical path, lamp intensity, and exposure time were held constant for all images. Exposure time was set to avoid saturating the pixel intensities in the brightest image.
Image Analysis
An observer blinded to the experimental group counted total nuclei and fragmented nuclei in each image. Four separate images each in two independent cell preparations were evaluated for each experimental group. At least 300 cells were counted for each preparation.
Statistical Analysis
Values were compared among experimental groups by analysis of variance, and the Tukey test was used for post hoc pairwise comparisons (27). Data are reported as means ± SE. Significance was accepted if the probability of a type I error was <0.05.
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RESULTS |
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PTHrP-(134) and PTHrP-(140173) both stimulated production of cAMP by lung cancer cells in a dose-dependent fashion (Fig. 1). Between the lowest and highest doses of PTHrP-(134), cAMP levels rose by 15% (P < 0.05 vs. lowest dose). PTHrP-(140173) caused greater increases in secondary messenger production,
35% (P < 0.05). These experiments were performed in the presence of 1 µM IBMX. IBMX by itself increased cAMP by 15 ± 5% vs. cells treated with the DMSO vehicle, an increase roughly the same as that caused by PTHrP-(134) treatment. In contrast, cAMP levels were increased almost 30-fold in cells treated with forskolin (data not shown). PTHrP peptides did not alter inositol phosphate levels in the lung cancer cells. Treatment with ATP caused a 70% increase in inositol phosphates (n = 4; P < 0.05), demonstrating that the cells were able to augment their phospholipase C activity in response to a paracrine stimulus. We performed additional studies with PTHrP-(140173) because its signaling mechanisms have not been previously investigated. We also screened a series of prostate carcinoma cell lines to investigate whether PTHrP-(140173) activates PKA or phospholipase C in other cell types. In Dupro-1 and LNCaP prostate carcinoma cells, 100 nM PTHrP-(140173) stimulated inositol phosphate levels by 29 ± 10% and 24 ± 2%, respectively, compared with untreated cells (P < 0.05).
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The PTHrP peptides protected lung cancer cells against UV-induced apoptosis as previously described (11). Pretreating BEN cells with 100 nM PTHrP-(140173) reduced caspase-3 activity after UV by 1525% (Fig. 2; P < 0.05 vs. untreated irradiated cells). In addition, the amino-terminal and carboxy-terminal peptides reduced the size of the population of cells with less than a diploid complement of DNA by 22% and 14%, respectively, compared with untreated irradiated cells (P < 0.05). The percentage of cells with subdiploid DNA content was 27 ± 2% in untreated irradiated cells vs. 20.8 ± 0.9% and 20.9 ± 1.0% in cells treated with PTHrP-(134) and PTHrP-(140173), respectively (Fig. 3). The protective effects were blocked when PKA was pharmacologically inhibited. When cells were treated with 5 µM H89 before PTHrP-(140173) exposure, the peptide had no significant effect on caspase-3 activity or the incidence of DNA loss (Figs. 2 and 3).
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Effects on caspase activities. UV irradiation caused a threefold increase in caspase-3 activity in lung cancer cell lysates (Fig. 4). Pretreating cells with IBMX or forskolin plus IBMX reduced caspase activities in irradiated cells to levels close to control values. PMA caused a small decrease in caspase-3 activity, but the effect was not statistically significant. None of the treatments had a significant effect on caspase-3 in the absence of irradiation. We observed that IBMX ameliorated UV-induced caspase activation to approximately the same extent as forskolin plus IBMX. To expand on this finding, we also investigated whether forskolin would have a protective effect by itself. Forskolin treatment alone reduced caspase activity in irradiated cells to 28 ± 0.3% of levels in irradiated cells that were untreated (n = 3 replicates per experimental treatment; P < 0.001), similar to the effect of forskolin plus IBMX. We also tested the effect of another PKA activator, CPT-cAMP. It, too, protected against caspase-3 activation, reducing levels to 59 ± 1% of activity in untreated but irradiated cells (P < 0.001; n = 4 replicates/group).
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Effects on caspase activity. BEN lung cancer cells that were pretreated for 30 min with H89, a PKA inhibitor, demonstrated a nearly 50% increase in caspase-3 activity after UV compared with untreated irradiated cells (P < 0.05; Fig. 7). H89 had no effect on caspase-3 activity in nonirradiated cells.
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DISCUSSION |
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Studies with our well-established model using UV irradiation as an apoptosis-producing stimulus provided evidence that the antiapoptotic effects of the PTHrP peptides were linked to PKA. PTHrP-(134) and PTHrP-(140173) reduced caspase-3 activation and attenuated DNA loss after UV irradiation in lung cancer cells, consistent with our previous results (11). PKA blockade with H89 prevented these protective effects, indicating that PKA acts downstream of the peptides and that PKA-independent antiapoptotic effects are unlikely to be important. Investigating the effects of activating drugs bolstered the evidence in favor of PKA-mediated resistance to apoptosis. Agents that augmented cAMP levels or stimulated PKA, such as forskolin, IBMX and CPT-cAMP, reduced lung cancer apoptosis after UV irradiation. The experimental design utilized several measures of apoptosis to endow the results with greater confidence. The measures included evaluation of caspase activation, DNA loss, and morphological criteria. The changes in caspase activation and DNA loss with IBMX and low-dose forskolin shown in Fig. 6 indicate that very small changes in cAMP were sufficient to protect cells from programmed cell death. Indeed, the efficacy of the PTHrP peptides appeared to be dependent on the potent relationship between cAMP and apoptosis resistance. PTHrP-(134), PTHrP-(140173), and IBMX each increased cAMP by small increments, on the order of the changes with low-dose forskolin. Nonetheless, the changes induced by each were sufficient to alter the apoptotic process. BEN cells make PTHrP, so the endogenous protein would confer some resistance against apoptotic stimuli. BEN cell PTHrP production would not affect our results because it is constant throughout the experimental groups. The endogenous effect must not be maximal, because exogenous PTHrP accords additional protection.
Our observations on PTHrP, PKA, and programmed cell death are consistent with a large body of studies on lung cancer and other tissues. It is well established that cAMP can have pro- or antiapoptotic effects depending on cell type and context. For example, increases in cAMP induce apoptosis in S49 T lymphoma cells (28) but protect intestinal crypt cells and hepatocytes against apoptosis (9, 24). PKA is involved in apoptosis protection for a variety of cancers, including non-small cell carcinoma and small cell carcinoma (7, 15, 18, 22). An example of this type of effect in lung cancer is the ability of nicotine to suppress apoptosis by PKA-mediated phosphorylation of Bad (15). Other investigators have reported that PTHrP regulates apoptosis through PKA. For instance, PTHrP-(134) blocks dexamethasone-mediated apoptosis of preconfluent mesenchymal cells in a cAMP-dependent manner (6). Thus our discovery that PTHrP confers apoptosis resistance in lung cancer utilizing a PKA-dependent mechanism is in concert with results in previous studies.
In summary, we have demonstrated that PTHrP-(140173) augments lung cancer cell cAMP levels, that PKA activation protects lung cancer cells from UV-induced apoptosis, and that PKA inhibition blocks the antiapoptotic effects of the PTHrP peptide. The observations on PTHrP-(140173) are among the first to demonstrate activity of this peptide and to suggest that it could act through a G protein-coupled receptor, similar to the receptor for PTHrP-(134). Further studies are indicated to explore downstream mechanisms for the actions of PTHrP on apoptosis in lung cancer and to determine the significance of these effects on progression of lung carcinoma.
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GRANTS |
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FOOTNOTES |
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The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the payment of page charges. The article must therefore be hereby marked "advertisement" in accordance with 18 U.S.C. Section 1734 solely to indicate this fact.
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