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Biochemistry |
The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Division of Magnetic Resonance ResearchOncology Section, Department of Radiology, Baltimore, Maryland 21205
| ABSTRACT |
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| INTRODUCTION |
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NMR has been used to study choline phospholipid metabolism in cells or excised tissues, as well as noninvasively in vivo (10, 11, 12, 13) . Depending on the experimental conditions, 1H NMR methods can detect either individual choline phospholipid metabolites or a peak corresponding to total choline-containing metabolites. Using 1H NMR, invasive cancer could be distinguished from benign breast lesions by the high total choline phospholipid metabolite levels in the former (10) . In another study, increased choline phospholipid metabolite levels characterized two cancer cell lines (MCF-7 and T47D) compared with that of a normal HMEC line; there were no distinct differences in high energy phosphates and the rates of glucose consumption and aerobic glycolysis (14) . These studies support the existence of differences in phosphatidylcholine metabolism between normal epithelial cells and cancer cells in vitro and between benign and malignant cells in vivo. The possibility of differential regulation of MCPM in normal versus tumor cells suggests a diagnostic role for enhanced MCPM and has implications for therapeutic intervention.
Despite the indication of an altered MCPM in breast cancer cells, no attempt has been made to systematically relate the multistep process of carcinogenesis to altered MCPM in mammary epithelial cells. To address this issue, we have assessed PCho, GPC, and choline levels in a number of epithelial cell lines derived from reduction mammoplasty (normal) tissues and neoplastic lesions and also investigated the effects of immortalization and oncogene transformation on MCPM. Such a model has been used previously by other workers to evaluate the stepwise progression in mammary epithelium from normal to malignant phenotype (15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20) . Our data suggest that phenotypic changes in MCPM probably commence early in carcinogenesis and may, as with most other neoplastic phenotypes, be regulated by an interplay of cellular immortalization and oncogene transformation.
| MATERIALS AND METHODS |
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Growth Rate and Cell Size.
The growth rate of the cell lines used in this study were determined using the MTT assay (24)
. Briefly, cells (5 x 103) were plated in 24-well plates in 1 ml of media and incubated under normal culture conditions for up to 6 days. To estimate cell number, the cells were incubated with MTT (Sigma Chemical Co., St. Louis, MO) for 4 h. MTT was then removed, and the resulting formazan crystals were dissolved in 1 ml of DMSO and 125 µl of glycine buffer (pH 10.5; Ref. 24
). The UV absorbance of the formazan solution was recorded at 553 nm (
max). Four replicates were used to calculate the cell doubling time for each cell line. Because the cells had different morphologies and diameters, the cell size was determined for each cell line by trypsinizing the cells and counting the diameter of 20 random cells using an optical microscope.
Extraction.
To determine the choline phospholipid metabolite content, cells growing in culture were fed with fresh media 24 h before extraction and used at 7080% confluency. Cells (107 to 108) were trypsinized, washed twice with normal saline, and homogenized with ice-cold 8% perchloric acid (5 ml). The homogenates were centrifuged (15000 rpm for 15 min at 4°C), and the supernatants were neutralized with 3 M K2CO3/1 M KOH buffer. The samples were again clarified by centrifugation, treated with
50 mg Chelex (Sigma) to remove divalent ions, lyophilized, and resuspended in 0.5 ml of D2O for NMR analysis. Trimethylsilyl propionate (5 µl) was used as an internal standard. 1H NMR spectra of the extracts were acquired on a 11.7T Bruker NMR spectrometer with a 5-mm probe. Fully relaxed spectra (without saturation effects) were obtained using the following acquisition parameters: 30° flip angle, 6000 Hz sweep width, 4.7 s repetition time, 32 K block size, and 512 scans. The data were analyzed using an in-house software, Soft Fourier Transform (P. Barker, The Johns Hopkins University). PCho, GPC, and total choline-containing (PCho + GPC + choline) metabolite levels were determined and normalized to cell size. Between three and five independent extracts were analyzed per cell line.
The reason for normalizing metabolite levels to cell size was due to differences in cell size between the cell lines used in this study. This necessitated normalization to either cell size or protein concentration. The former requires fewer cells and is therefore suited to experiments with mortal cells, which senesce after 5 to 18 passages. To determine concentrations, peak amplitudes for choline PCho, GPC, and total choline-containing metabolites (PCho + GPC + choline) were compared with that of the internal standard TSP according to the equation:
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3. For this equation to be valid, it is necessary that spectra are fully relaxed, as was the case here, or to correct for saturation.
Statistical Analysis.
Statistical analysis of the data were performed using StatView II version 1.04, 1991 (Abacus Concepts, Inc., Berkeley, CA). The statistical significance of differences in metabolite levels between cell lines was determined using the Mann-Whitney U test. Ps of
0.05 were considered to be significant.
| RESULTS |
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3.2 ppm downfield of the internal standard and chemical shift reference TSP. Peak assignments were performed with authentic compounds. Ten epithelial cell lines of mammary origin were characterized by this method; the phenotype and cell size of these cell lines are indicated in Table 1
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| DISCUSSION |
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We have investigated the association between malignant carcinogenic processes and MCPM by monitoring the three choline phospholipid metabolites (choline, PCho, and GPC) in 10 cell lines, which represent different stages of malignant progression. Our findings suggest that normal human mammary epithelium has low steady-state levels of total choline-containing metabolites. In addition to their low total choline-containing metabolite levels, we also demonstrated that GPC was the major metabolite in the normal HMECs. A GPC to PCho switch appeared to be an early phenotypic change during carcinogenesis, as observed in benzo(a)pyrene-immortalized cells and where instead of GPC, PCho became the major choline phospholipid metabolites. However, despite this "switch," total choline-containing metabolite levels remained low in these immortalized cells. Transformation of 184B5 immortal cells by forced overexpression of the erbB2 oncogene, however, resulted in a dramatic increase in both PCho:GPC ratio and total choline levels compared with the benzo(a)pyrene-immortalized cells. However, total choline-containing metabolites and PCho levels were still less than those of tumor-derived cells. erbB2 is an important (proto)oncogene that is amplified in 2030% of breast cancer cases and is associated with poor prognosis; amplification of this oncogene is thought to occur late in tumor progression (27, 28, 29, 30) . Transformation of 184B5 by this gene results in the ability of these cells to form colonies in semisolid medium and to form small, low frequency tumors with high latency in vivo (16) . Our data with erbB2 demonstrate a new and heretofore unknown metabolic role for erbB2 and support the possibility that growth factor-mediated activation of the tyrosine kinase cascade (involving receptor-grb 2-sos-ras-raf-1-MEK-MAPK) can lead to an increase in PCho levels (6, 7, 8, 9) . In general, the levels and expression of receptors and proteins involved in the growth factor receptor-tyrosine kinase pathway tend to increase with malignancy. For instance, levels of epidermal growth factor receptor are low in the 184 strain, moderately high in 184A1, 184B5, and 184B5-erbB2 cells, and very high in MDA-MB-231 cells (19 , 31) . In addition, Daly et al. (32) reported up-regulation of grb2 mRNA/protein and the ras signaling pathway in MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231 cells compared with normal HMECs.
All of the breast tumor cell lines showed the GPC to PCho switch. In addition to this switch, all breast tumor cells showed significantly higher total choline-containing metabolite levels (P < 0.05). The increased total choline-containing metabolite levels were mainly due to an increase in PCho levels and, to a lesser and variable extent, an increase in GPC levels. There was a gradual increase in both total choline-containing metabolite levels and PCho levels as the cells acquired malignant phenotype (normal < immortal < oncogene-transformed < tumor-derived), with the highly invasive metastatic cell lines showing the highest levels. The high total choline content in the tumorigenic cells may be related to the multiple genetic changes that are associated with the multistep process of carcinogenesis (28) and may explain the progressive ability of these cells to gain anchorage-independent growth, form primary tumors in immune compromised mice, and finally to metastasize. Our studies confirm the work of Ting et al. (14) , who showed for a limited number of cell lines that levels of choline-containing metabolites were low in a normal mammary epithelial strain and high in two tumor-derived cell lines. Our results also support recent clinical observations that the total choline peak is higher for malignant lesions than for benign ones (10) .
It has been postulated that the rapid growth and proliferation of cancer cells and increased membrane/fatty acid requirements may be responsible for the high choline phospholipid metabolite levels in cancer versus normal tissues (12 , 25 , 26) ; the same argument could be made for benign lesions versus invasive cancers. However, the data presented here and that of Ting et al. (14) show that choline-containing metabolite levels remain low in normal HMECs in culture when the cells are proliferating at approximately similar rates as tumor-derived cells and suggest that although proliferation-related changes may occur (26) , the rate of proliferation per se cannot completely account for the increased choline phospholipid metabolism. In this study, we have demonstrated that an alteration in MCPM is linked to malignant transformation and progression of mammary epithelium. Presently, the exact mechanisms underlying the altered metabolism are unknown. Possible mechanisms include activation of enzymes involved in MCPM, such as via enhanced receptor tyrosine kinase cascade (9) , or differential induction of choline kinase isozymes, as reported previously for carcinogen-treated rat liver (33) . Other possible mechanisms that need to be investigated include amplification of choline kinase, phospholipase C, phospholipase D, and phospholipase A genes during carcinogenesis.
To conclude, the major finding to emerge from the present study is that choline phospholipid metabolite levels progressively increase in cultured HMECs as cells become more malignant. We therefore propose that carcinogenesis in human breast epithelial cells results in progressive alteration of membrane choline phospholipid metabolism. This work is relevant to diagnosis of breast cancer and also provides a rationale for selective pharmacological intervention.
| ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |
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| FOOTNOTES |
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1 This work was supported by USAMRMC Grant DAMD-17-96-16131. ![]()
2 To whom requests for reprints should be addressed, at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Division of Magnetic Resonance ResearchOncology Section, Department of Radiology, 208C Traylor Building, 720 Rutland Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21205. ![]()
3 The abbreviations used are: PtC, phosphatidylcholine; MCPM, membrane choline phospholipid metabolism; PCho, phosphocholine; GPC, glycerophosphocholine; NMR, nuclear magnetic resonance; HMEC, human mammary epithelial cell; MTT, 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide; TSP, trimethylsilylpropionate. ![]()
4 Z. M. Bhujwalla and E. O. Aboagye, unpublished data. ![]()
Received 6/18/98. Accepted 10/28/98.
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