Abstract 3521: The effect of MazF, Escherichia coli ribonuclease, on gastric adenocarcinoma (AGS cells)

Abstract

Apoptosis is a gene-directed program that could be inhibited by several factors such as the disruption of the balance between pro-apoptotic and anti-apoptotic proteins, the impaired death receptor signalling or the reduced caspase functions. Several studies have shown that ribonucleases or antibiotics can induce apoptosis in mammalian cells through the shutoff of the protein synthesises. MazF produced by E. coli is a ribonuclease protein that cleaves mRNAs at ACA sequence sites and inhibits their translation. Thus, we hypothesized that the overexpression of MazF proteins in cancer cells could lead to the induction of apoptosis. In the present study, the ACA-less mazF gene was inserted into pSF-T7-EMCV T7 IRES expression plasmid. The mRNAs of mazF gene were synthesized in in vitro conditions, and one μg/ml of the mRNA was transferred into AGS (Gastric adenocarcinoma) cell line. The incidence of apoptosis was detected by conducting caspase 3/7 and Annexin-V assays. The results showed that 99.83% of cells were detached after 18 hours, 0.0086% of cells remained attached without apparent apoptosis, but 0.101% of attached cells were under apoptotic conditions. The results suggest that MazF protein has an ability to induce apoptosis in AGS cells. Since this protein can cleave mRNAs at ACA sites, it could inhibit protein synthesis, reduce the growth rate, and induce apoptosis in cancer cells. This finding is the first report of the application of MazF as an anti-cancer agent for the induction of apoptosis in AGS cell line. Citation Format: Maryam Saffarian, Jeremy Tzeng. The effect of MazF, Escherichia coli ribonuclease, on gastric adenocarcinoma (AGS cells). [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 107th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2016 Apr 16-20; New Orleans, LA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2016;76(14 Suppl):Abstract nr 3521.