Background: It has been confirmed that nm23-H1 gene is one of the tumor metastasis suppressor genes. Up to now, the exact mechanism of nm23-H1 gene is uncertian. The aim of this study is to compare the biological behavior changes among three human high-metastatic large cell lung cancer cell lines which transfected and untransfected nm23-H1 gene, and to study the mechanism of nm23-H1 gene supressing the metastasis.
Methods: Boyden Chamber and MTT method were used to detect the rates of invasion and proliferation among different human pulmonary carcinoma cells of transfected and untransfected nm23-H1 gene; meanwhile The three lung cancer cell lines were treated with PKC inhibitor Calphostin C, and the above measurements were also performed.
Results: The ability of invasion and proliferation of L9981 and L9981-PLXSN human high-metastatic large cell lung cancer cells,which lack of nm23-H1gene, was higher than that of L9981-nm23-H1 human high-metastatic large cell line, which transfected with nm23-H1gene (P <0.001). There was no difference beteween L9981 and L9981-PLXSN cell lines (P >0.05). After treated with PKC inhibitor Calphstin C,the invasion and proliferation ability of three lung cancer cell lines were obviously go down (P <0.001), however, the invasion and proliferation ability of L9981-nm23-H1 lung cancer cell line was still lower than those of L9981 and L9981-PLXSN lung cancer cell lines (P <0.001), and there was also no significant difference between two later cell lines (P >0.05).
Conclusions: Our data suggest that nm23-H1 gene can significantly inhibit the cell proliferation and invasion in L9981 lung cancer line. The effect of nm23-H1 might be correlated with downregulation of PKC signal transduction in human high-metastatic large cell lung cancer cell line.