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N-Acetylcysteine Conjugate of Phenethyl Isothiocyanate Enhances Apoptosis in Growth-Stimulated Human Lung Cells

¹ Divisions of Carcinogenesis and Molecular Epidemiology, American Health Foundation Cancer Center, Institute for Cancer Prevention, Valhalla and ² Brander Cancer Research Institute, New York Medical College, Hawthorne, New York

Requests for reprints: Yang-Ming Yang, Department of Medicine, New York Medical College, Valhalla, NY 10595. Phone: 914-594-4776; Fax: 914-594-4726; E-mail: yang-ming_yang{at}nymc.edu.

We previously showed that dietary treatment with the N-acetylcysteine conjugate of phenethyl isothiocyanate (PEITC-NAC) inhibited benzo(a)pyrene-induced lung tumorigenesis in A/J mice, and that tumor inhibition was associated with induction of activator protein-1 (AP-1) activity and stimulation of apoptosis in the lungs of mice. In the present study, we show that PEITC-NAC also induces apoptosis and AP-1 activity in human lung adenocarcinoma A549 cells, and that activation of AP-1 is important in PEITC-NAC induced apoptosis in these cells. PEITC-NAC induced AP-1 binding activity in A549 cells in a dose- and time-dependent manner; peak activity appeared at 10 µmol/L after 24 hours. At that time, flow cytometric analysis showed a sub-G₁ peak, indicating that 4.5% of the cells had undergone apoptosis. When wild-type c-jun cDNA was transfected into A549 cells, PEITC-NAC–mediated apoptosis was greatly increased in the c-jun–transfected cells compared with the control vector–transfected cells, based on cell morphology and analysis of DNA fragmentation. Furthermore, cells that were pretreated with 100 nmol/L 12-O-tetradecanoyl phorbol-13-acetate, and then treated with 25 µmol/L PEITC-NAC, underwent enhanced apoptosis compared with cells that were treated with PEITC-NAC alone; cells treated with 12-O-tetradecanoyl phorbol-13-acetate alone showed active cell growth without apoptosis. Bivariate flow cytometric analysis of DNA strand breaks versus DNA content showed that apoptosis induced by PEITC-NAC occurred predominantly in the G₂-M phase. These findings suggest that growth-stimulated cells with an elevated basal AP-1 activity, i.e., A549 cells transfected with wild-type c-jun or treated with a tumor promoter, were more sensitive to PEITC-NAC–mediated apoptosis. The observation that PEITC-NAC induces apoptosis predominantly in growth-promoted cells, such as neoplastic cells, suggests a selective mechanism by which PEITC-NAC inhibits lung carcinogenesis.

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