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Acquisition of a Tumorigenic Phenotype by a Rat Ventral Prostate Epithelial Cell Line Expressing a Transfected Activated neu Oncogene¹

Urology Research Laboratory, The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas 77030

The neu oncogene has been demonstrated to be a potent transforming gene in rodent fibroblasts. The overexpression of the human erbB-2/neu oncogene has been implicated in the development and/or prognosis of several human carcinomas including that of the prostate. To assess the transforming potential of the activated rat neu oncogene in prostatic epithelial carcinogenesis, this laboratory has transfected a cloned non-tumorigenic, rat ventral prostate epithelial cell line, NbE-1.4, with an activated, point-mutated neu oncogene. Transfection of NbE-1.4 cells with the activated neu oncogene expression vector, pSV-neu-T (neu-T), resulted in an altered cell morphology, an increase in soft agar colony-forming efficiency, and conversion to a tumorigenic phenotype. Although the parental NbE-1.4 cells expressed endogenous c-neu mRNA, a reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction assay determined that the neu-T-transfected clones expressed only the point-mutated neu-T mRNA. The suppression of the c-neu transcripts occurred regardless of the neu-T mRNA level expressed in these cell clones. These data provide evidence to show that low-level expression of an activated neu oncogene alone was insufficient to transform rat prostate epithelial cells. Rather, overexpression of an activated neu oncogene correlated well with the acquisition of a tumorigenic phenotype by the NbE-1.4 epithelial cell line.

¹ This work was supported in part by National Cancer Institute Core Grant CA-16672. Primary support was provided by NIH Grants DK-38649 and CA-56307 awarded to L. W. K. C.

² To whom requests for reprints should be addressed.

Received 10/14/91. Accepted 3/24/92.

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