Abstract. Progesterone has a potential protective effect against ovarian carcinoma induced by estrogen. Progesterone is also known to cause apoptosis while tamoxifen induces growth arrest. Therefore, we attempted to determine whether combined treatment with progesterone and tamoxifen has a synergistic effect on anti-cancer activity. Although progesterone is known to cause apoptosis while tamoxifen induces growth arrest in many cancer cells, the detailed action of progesterone and tamoxifen and the anticancer effect of combined treatment have not been tested in ovarian cancer cells. Therefore, we tested the growth and apoptosis activity of progesterone and tamoxifen and the anticancer effect of combined treatment of progesterone and tamoxifen in ovarian cancer cells. Ovarian cancer cells, PA-1, were treated with progesterone, tamoxifen, or a combination of progesterone and tamoxifen. The anti-cancer effects were investigated by use of flow cytometry, terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase dUTP nick end labeling (TUNEL) assay, DNA fragmentation analysis, and Western blot analysis. We found that 100 µM progesterone induced typical apoptosis in PA-1 cells. Treatment of PA-1 cells with 10 µM tamoxifen resulted in an increase in the levels of p21, p27, p16 and phospho-pRb, indicating typical G 1 arrest. Co-treatment of PA-1 cells with 100 µM progesterone and 10 µM tamoxifen resulted in typical apoptosis, similar to that induced by treatment with 100 µM progesterone alone. These results indicate that progesterone caused apoptosis and tamoxifen induced G 1 arrest. Combined treatment with tamoxifen and progesterone caused apoptosis similar to that induced by treatment with progesterone alone and had no additional anti-cancer effect in ovarian cancer cells.
PC12 cells were differentiated into the cells of chromaffin phenotype by butyrate treatment. Cells were aggregated and formed tight cell adhesion. To investigate the molecular change in this differentiation, we examined expression levels of cell adhesion proteins and extracellular proteins during butyrate induced-differentiation of PC12 cells. Integrin b1, integrin a7, E cadherin, VCAM, collagen-I, fibronectin, desmoglein and connexin were increased during differentiation. The levels of clusterin and secreted clusterin were also increased. These increased levels of cell adhesion proteins and extracellular proteins appear to induce cell aggregation and tight cell adhesion. The levels of p21, p27 and p16 were increased probably because of differentiation-related growth arrest during differentiation. Prolonged incubation of butyrate up to 1 day was required for differentiation. Signal transduction pathways for this differentiatiom could not be identified since various inhibitors had no effect. The results showed that butyrateinduced differentiation of PC12 cells to chromaffin cells involves tight cell adhesion and induction of extracellular proteins and cell adhesion proteins.
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