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Molecular Biology and Genetics |
The Picower Institute for Medical Research NY, Manhasset, New York 10030 [T. A., J. C., C. M., S. D., R. M.]; Kurume University School of Medicine, Kurume, Japan [Z. M.]; Division of Immunology, Weill Medical College of Cornell University, New York, New York 10021 [J. C.]; and Department of Medicine, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut 06520-8031 [L. L., R. B.]
| ABSTRACT |
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| INTRODUCTION |
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As a result of a genomic search for early response genes, we recently cloned a novel PFK-2 isoform, termed iPFK-2, which is distinguished by the presence of multiple copies of the AUUUA sequence in the 3'UTR of its mRNA (18) . The AUUUA motif confers instability and enhanced translational activity to mRNAs and typifies the 3'UTR structure of several proto-oncogenes and proinflammatory cytokines (19) . Accordingly, the discovery of AUUUA repeat elements in the regulatory region of a gene for a glycolytic enzyme was notable. The iPFK-2 mRNA transcript is encoded by a single gene termed PFKFB3 [also referred to as ubiquitous PFK-2 (20) , placental PFK-2 (21) , and PRG1 (22) ], that is localized on chromosome 10p15-p14 (20) . Three additional PFK-2 isozymes (PFKFB1, PFKFB2, and PFKFB4) with distinct activities and tissue expression profiles also have been identified (23, 24, 25) . Of the four PFK-2 isozymes, only PFKFB3 lacks a critical serine phosphorylation site that is required for the down-regulation of kinase activity (26) . Accordingly, PFKFB3 has the highest kinase/phosphatase activity ratio of all of the PFK-2 isoforms discovered to date, which is consistent with its role as a powerful activator of glycolysis (26) .
iPFK-2 (PFKFB3) mRNA and protein expression and intracellular F2,6BP levels are undetectable in quiescent peripheral blood monocytes but increase appreciably upon proinflammatory activation (18) , suggesting that this gene is activated in a manner analogous to that of other early response genes. By contrast, iPFK-2 mRNA and protein expression are constitutively expressed in several transformed cell lines when compared with nontransformed cells (18) . Moreover, antisense iPFK-2 oligonucleotide transfection of K562 leukemia cells causes a marked inhibition of cell proliferation and a decrease in steady-state levels of 5-phosphoribosyl-1-PPI, a glucose-derived precursor that is required for the committed first step of de novo purine and pyrimidine synthesis (18) . Lastly, antisense iPFK-2 treatment in vivo significantly suppresses the outgrowth of human K562 tumors implanted in nude mice, thereby supporting the critical role of this regulatory enzyme in tumor cell metabolism in vivo (18) .
In this report, we have examined 60 primary human solid tumors and corresponding normal tissues and found that iPFK-2 mRNA and protein is expressed at especially high levels by neoplastic cells in situ. Additionally, we show that iPFK-2 expression is up-regulated in response to hypoxic challenge and during the S phase or DNA synthesis phase of the cell cycle.
| MATERIALS AND METHODS |
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In Situ Hybridization.
The antisense and sense RNA probes for iPFK-2 were 1.6 kb in length and designed to contain the AU-rich motif in the 3'UTR (corresponding to nucleotides 2557-4162; GenBank accession no. AF056320). The probes were synthesized with T7 polymerase using 35S-CTP and alkali hydrolyzed before use so as to generate probes of
200300 nucleotides in length. Tissue sections were deparaffinized with xylene and then pretreated with proteinase K at 37°C for 15 min. The sections then were incubated with 0.1 M triethanolamine buffer and acetylated with 0.12% acetic anhydride in 0.1 M triethanolamine buffer to reduce the nonspecific binding of the probe. Prehybridization was performed with hybridization solution containing 0.3 M NaCl, 0.5 mM EDTA (pH 8.0), 10 mM Tris-Cl (pH 7.4), 0.1% BSA, 0.02% Ficoll, 0.2% polyvinylpyrolidone, 5 mM DTT, 50% deionized formamide, and 50 µg/ml mRNA for 2 h at 45°C. Hybridization was performed with 35S-labeled sense or antisense RNA probes at 1.6 x 105 cpm/µl in hybridization solution containing 10% dextran sulfate for 16 h at 45°C. After hybridization, the sections were washed in 2x SSC/1 mM EDTA/5 mM DTT for 15 min at room temperature and then in 50% formamide/1x SSC/0.5 mM EDTA for 15 min at 45°C. The slides were washed three times in 2x SSC/1 mM EDTA/0.1% Triton X-100/5 mM DTT for 15 min at 60°C and twice in 0.1x SSC/1 mM EDTA/5 mM DTT for 15 min at 60°C. The slides then were incubated for 40 min in 25 µg/ml RNase A and 0.25 unit/µl RNase T1 at 37°C. Finally, the slides were washed twice in 2x SSC/1 mM EDTA/5 mM DTT at 60°C, dehydrated, dipped in NTB-3 emulsion autoradiography (Eastman Kodak, Rochester, NY), allowed to dry, and exposed in the dark at 4°C for 310 days. The emulsion was developed with D19 developer (Eastman Kodak) and counterstained with H&E and observed under the microscope.
Immunohistochemistry.
Five-µm sections were treated with xylene to remove paraffin, rehydrated, and treated with 0.3% hydrogen peroxide for 30 min to eliminate endogenous peroxidase activity. The sections then were blocked by incubation with 1.5% normal goat serum for 20 min at room temperature. After washing, the sections were treated with a rabbit polyclonal anti-iPFK-2 antibody raised to the recombinant protein (1:200 dilution for 30 min). Immunoblotting of human tissue extract (brain, kidney, and liver) and recombinant iPFK-2 protein demonstrated that anti-iPFK-2 antibody recognized a single species with no cross-reactivity (Ref. 18
; data not shown).
The tissue sections were treated with Vectastain Elite ABC kit (Vector Laboratories) according to manufactures recommendation. The negative control included substitution of the primary antibody with nonimmune serum and incubation with anti-iPFK-2 antibody in the presence of excess recombinant iPFK-2. The sections were subsequently incubated with biotinylated, goat antirabbit immunoglobulin (Vector Laboratories, Burlingame, CA) and developed with an avidin-biotin peroxidase reaction using 3,3'-diaminobenzidine tetrahydrochloride as chromogen. After counterstaining with Mayers hematoxylin (Sigma, St. Louis, MO), the sections were dehydrated, and a coverslip was attached with Permount (Fisher Scientific, Pittsburgh, PA). The intensity of the immunoreactions were graded in a blinded fashion as negative (0), weakly positive (1) , moderately positive (2) , or strongly positive (3) .
Cell Culture.
Human lung fibroblasts (Hs 218.Lu) and the colon adenocarcinoma cell line (SW 620) were obtained from the American Type Culture Collection (Manassas, VA). The SW 620 cells were cultured in RPMI 1640 (Life Technologies, Inc., Grand Island, NY) supplemented with 10% heat-inactivated FBS (HyClone Laboratories, Logan, UT) at 37°C in a humidified 5% CO2 incubator. Cells (2 x 105/ml) were subjected to hypoxia using the GasPak Pouch (Becton Dickinson, Sparks, MD) according to manufactures protocol for the times indicated in the figures.
For cell cycle analysis, Hs 218.Lu cells were treated as described previously (16) . In brief, 2 x 105/ml cells were cultured in DMEM/0.5% FBS for 48 h to induce growth arrest (G0-G1 phase). The cells then were incubated in DMEM/10% FBS for 6 h (G1 phase) or for 16 h in the presence of 5 µg/ml aphidicoline (G1-S phase; Calbiochem, San Diego, CA). The aphidicoline then was washed away, and the cells were reincubated for 5 h in DMEM/10% FBS (S phase) or for 20 h in DMEM/10% FBS containing 200 ng/ml colchicine (Calbiochem). The incorporation of [3H]thymidine (4 µCi/ml) into DNA was measured during the last 4 h of incubation at each stage of the cell cycle.
Intracellular F2,6BP levels were measured using Van Schaftingens method after the disruption of 1 x 106 cells in 0.8 ml of 50 mM NaOH (17) .
Northern Blotting.
The human iPFK-2 cDNA containing the 3'UTR AU-rich domain (corresponding to nucleotides 25574162, as described above) was cloned into pCRII (Invitrogen, Carlsbad, CA), and antisense RNA probes were synthesized with the DIG RNA Labeling kit (Roche Molecular Biochemicals, Indianapolis, IN). Total RNA was extracted with an RNeasy Mini kit (Qiagen, Chatsworth, CA). Equal amounts of total RNA (10 µg/lane) were electrophoresed and transferred onto nylon membrane using NorthernMax kit (Ambion, Austin, TX). The membrane was UV cross-linked. Prehybridization was carried out in a hybridization solution (DIG easy Hyb; Roche, Indianapolis, IN) at 68°C for 4 h. The blot was hybridized overnight with DIG-labeled RNA probes at 68°C and washed twice in 2x SSC containing 0.1% SDS at room temperature for 15 min, then washed twice in 0.1x SSC containing 0.1% SDS at 68°C for 15 min. Detection of DIG-labeled RNA probes were carried out using DIG Wash and Block Buffer Set, alkaline phosphatase-conjugated antidigoxigenin antibody and CSPD (Roche Molecular Biochemicals) according to manufactures protocol.
Western Blotting.
Cells were washed in cold PBS and then radioimmunoprecipitation assay buffer containing protease inhibitor (Complete, Mini, EDTA-free; Roche Molecular Biochemicals) was added. The cells were disrupted by repeated aspiration through a 21-gauge needle. After incubation on ice for 30 min, the protein concentration was determined and the samples were mixed with an equal volume of 2x Laemmli loading buffer. The samples were denatured for 5 min, and proteins were separated by 10% SDS-acrylamide electrophoresis gels (Bio-Rad, Hercules, CA) and transferred to polyvinylidene difluoride membranes (Millipore, Bedford, MA). The membranes were incubated with a polyclonal anti-iPFK-2 antibody (1:1000 dilution) that was raised against recombinant human iPFK-2 protein as described above. Bound antibody was visualized with horseradish peroxidase-conjugated donkey antirabbit antibody and enhanced chemiluminescence using the ECL system (Amersham, Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom).
| RESULTS |
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We investigated iPFK-2 mRNA and protein expression in SW 620 human colon adenocarcinoma cells after culture in ambient oxygen or under conditions of hypoxia. Hypoxia induced a significant and time-dependent increase in cellular iPFK-2 mRNA over the 14-h study period (Fig. 5A)
. This effect was accompanied by a concomitant increase in intracellular iPFK-2 protein levels (Fig. 5B)
. Surprisingly, despite the increased expression of iPFK-2 protein in these cells, the intracellular content of F2,6BP decreased (Fig. 5C)
. These data suggest that the substrate for iPFK-2, F6P, may be restricted by either decreased production by phosphoglucose isomerase or by increased 1-phosphorylation by PFK-1.
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| DISCUSSION |
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Positron emission tomography with 2-[18F]fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose has demonstrated that human tumors uniformly metabolize about 10-fold more glucose than normal tissues in situ, regardless of their cell type or organ (2 , 3 , 6 , 29) . Moreover, the rate of glucose metabolism directly correlates with tumor aggressiveness (i.e., growth rates, invasiveness, and metastatic potential) and with overall patient morbidity and mortality (4 , 5) . This metabolic disturbance is particularly surprising because satisfying the energy demands of the cell with glycolysis alone is an inefficient process and produces excess H+ ions, thereby decreasing the extracellular pH and threatening cellular integrity (30 , 31) . Although the precise reasons for increased aerobic glycolysis by cancer cells are unknown, the main products of glycolysis, ATP and carbohydrate precursors for the synthesis of nucleic acids and amino acids, are essential for rapid cell proliferation (28) .
Until recently, the specific regulatory mechanisms responsible for increased glycolysis in the presence of oxygen have remained largely obscure. Increased cell surface expression of glucose transporter 1 (7 , 32) and type II hexokinase activity (33, 34, 35) in cancer cells has been found to be necessary for high glycolytic flux. High glucose transporter 1 expression enables cancer cells to be freely permeable to extracellular glucose, and the activities of downstream glycolytic enzymes thus control the rate of glucose flux. Hexokinase phosphorylates glucose to form glucose 6-phosphate, which can undergo three possible fates: conversion into glycogen; oxidation by the pentose phosphate pathway to generate NADPH; or, as observed in rapidly proliferating cancer cells, isomerization to F6P. Although hexokinase is the first irreversible step of glycolysis, it is not the rate-limiting step because of the several fates of its product. Rather, PFK-1 is the first irreversible and committed step of glycolysis, and this enzyme thus dictates the rate of glycoytic flux (9 , 17 , 28) . PFK-1 activity is modulated by several allosteric effectors, including ATP (i.e., the Pasteur effect), H+ ions, and citrate, which creates negative feedback when energy is abundant (9 , 17 , 28) . Importantly, PFK-1 activities are markedly increased in both cancer cell lines and primary tumor tissues in situ (36, 37, 38) .
In 1980, a novel allosteric regulator of PFK-1 and glycolysis was discovered by Van Schaftingen et al.: F2,6BP (10) . F2,6BP allosterically activates glycolysis by shifting the conformational equilibrium of PFK-1 from a low to a high affinity state for its substrate, F6P (10 , 17) . Micromolar intracellular concentrations of F2,6BP can relieve the tonic allosteric inhibition by ATP on PFK-1 that occurs in the presence of oxygen (10 , 17) . The steady-state concentration of F2,6BP depends on the activity of the homodimeric bifunctional enzyme PFK-2), which is expressed in several tissue-specific isoforms (23, 24, 25) . Of importance, multiple established cancer cell lines (i.e., Ehrlich ascites tumor cells, HeLa cells, HT29 colon adenocarcinoma cells, Lewis lung carcinoma cells, HL60 cells, SW480 colon adenocarcinoma cells, A549 lung adenocarcinoma cells, and K562 leukemia cells) have markedly elevated levels of F2,6BP when compared with their normal tissue counterparts (11, 12, 13, 14 , 18) . Furthermore, transformation of chick embryo fibroblasts by retroviruses carrying either the v-src or v-fps oncogenes induces F2,6BP synthesis and causes increased glycolytic flux and cell proliferation (15) . Whereas the allosteric actions of F2,6BP had been implicated in the observed high glycolytic flux of neoplastic cells, the particular PFK-2 isozyme responsible for malignant F2,6BP production has only recently been identified.
Rapidly proliferating transformed cells constitutively express iPFK-2 (PFKFB3) mRNA and protein in vitro, and inhibition of iPFK-2 expression decreases tumor growth in experimental animal models (18) . We now find that iPFK-2 mRNA and protein are expressed at high levels in situ by the neoplastic cells of several primary human solid tumors. The observation that iPFK-2 is constitutively expressed by neoplasms in situ and that its product, F2,6BP, functions to activate glycolytic flux reinforces the concept that the high glycolytic flux of neoplastic tissues is regulated via this pathway.
The regulation of iPFK-2 activity in vivo is likely the result of the net effect of transcriptional mediators (e.g., DNA and mRNA/AU-binding factors) and posttranslational modifications (e.g., serine kinases). Of note, ras-transformation in rat-1 fibroblasts has been demonstrated previously to induce high intracellular F2,6BP levels and aerobic glycolysis (16)
. Approximately 25% of all human tumors express mutated, activated ras, and 50% of human colon carcinomas bear mutant ras oncogenes (39)
. Ras activation of the extracellular signal-regulated/mitogen-activated protein kinase cascade leads to increased gene expression in part through the action of the transcription factors myc and nuclear factor
B, both of which have multiple potential binding sites on the iPFK-2 promoter (GenBank accession no. AF11058; Refs. 40, 41, 42
).
Recently, Minchenko et al. (43) demonstrated that human hepatoma cells up-regulate iPFK-2 (PFKB3) mRNA in response to hypoxia and that the transcription factor HIF-1 is required for this induction in mouse fibroblasts. HIF-1 target genes are critical for neoplastic growth because disruption of HIF-1-promoting activity suppresses tumor growth in vivo (44) . We have demonstrated that both iPFK-2 mRNA and protein expression are increased in response to prolonged hypoxia in SW 620 colon adenocarcinoma cells. However, we find that increased iPFK-2 expression under these experimental conditions is associated with decreased intracellular F2,6BP levels. We hypothesize that the substrate of iPFK-2, fructose-6-phosphate, becomes restricted during exposure to hypoxic conditions.
We also demonstrate that iPFK-2 mRNA and protein expression increases during the S phase of the cell cycle, thus supporting the hypothesis that F2,6BP is required for enhanced flux of carbohydrates into de novo nucleic acid synthesis. Interestingly, HuR, one of the AU-rich element binding proteins that affects mRNA stability, has been found to localize to the cytoplasm and to regulate cyclin A and cyclin B1 mRNA stability during the G1-S phases of the cell cycle (45) . Given the large AU-rich element in the iPFK-2 mRNA 3'UTR and the observed increased iPFK-2 expression during the G1-S transition, we postulate that the HuR protein may also effect transcriptional regulation of iPFK-2.
Using Northern blot analysis, we previously found low constitutive expression of iPFK-2 mRNA in normal human tissues (18) . We now report that iPFK-2 protein is nearly ubiquitously expressed by epithelial cells, albeit at lower levels than most neoplastic cells in solid tumors. That epithelial cells use this regulatory pathway to enhance glycolysis is not surprising given their high rate of basal glycolysis and proliferation. Many common solid tumors originate from neoplastic transformation of epithelial cells (e.g., lung, breast, prostate, and colon adenocarcinomas), and we postulate that transformation capacity may depend, in part, on the metabolic phenotype of the cell before oncogenesis. Accordingly, high baseline iPFK-2 expression may confer a metabolic profile that predisposes epithelial cells to transformation and tumor progression.
In summary, we demonstrate that iPFK-2 is a novel, glyco-regulatory enzyme that is overexpressed by several solid tumors in situ, where it appears to function to enhance glycolytic flux and permit rapid cellular proliferation. iPFK-2 may find clinical utility as a novel target for the development of antineoplastic agents.
| ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |
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| FOOTNOTES |
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1 This work was supported by a grant from the Patterson Foundation ![]()
2 These authors contributed equally to this manuscript. ![]()
3 To whom requests for reprints should be addressed, at Yale University School of Medicine, 333 Cedar Street, P. O. Box 208031, New Haven, CT 06520-8031. Phone: (203) 737-1453; Fax: (203) 737-1477; richard.bucala{at}yale.edu ![]()
4 The abbreviations used are: PFK-1, 6-phosphofructo-1-kinase; F2,6BP, fructose-2,6-bisphosphate; PFK-2, 6-phosphofructo-2-kinase/fructose-2,6-biphosphatase; iPFK-2, inducible PFK-2; 3'UTR, 3' untranslated region; FBS, fetal bovine serum; F6P, fructose 6-phosphate; HIF-1, hypoxia inducible factor 1. ![]()
Received 6/24/02. Accepted 8/19/02.
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