These results suggest that molecules that efficiently disrupt GR-p53 interactions would have a therapeutic potential for the treatment of neuroblastoma and perhaps other diseases in which p53 is sequestered by GR.
Two neuroblastoma cell lines derived from the same patient before [SKNBE(1n)] and after [SKNBE(2c)] cytotoxic therapy were analyzed for the presence of chromosome 17 and p53 genes by fluorescent in situ hybridization, p53 mutations by DNA sequencing, and p53 function after irradiation by studying the transcription of p53-regulated genes, cell cycle arrest, and induction of apoptosis.
In this study, we determined the gene dosage of the N-myc gene (located at 2p24) and Survivin gene (located at 17q25) using the p53 gene (located at 17p13) as the internal control gene by the TaqMan polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based gene dosage analysis in 25 neuroblastoma samples.
These data obtained with neuroblastoma cell lines suggest that the high-level drug resistance observed in some recurrent neuroblastomas is attributable to p53 mutations and/or a loss of p53 function acquired during chemotherapy.
The inductions for 1 and 2 are more potent in the human neuroblastoma SH-SY5Y cells that contain wild-type p53 than in SH-SY5Y-5.6 cells that overexpress a dominant negative mutant of p53, thus suggesting that they induce apoptosis through a p53-dependent pathway.
Similarly, reduction of Brn-3a expression using anti-sense constructs reduces endogenous p53 expression in human neuroblastoma or cervical carcinoma cell lines growing in vitro and as tumours in nude mice whilst increasing Brn-3a levels enhances p53 expression.
Of note, NO enhances markedly the ability of low-dose ionizing radiation to elicit apoptotic killing of neuroblastoma cells expressing cytoplasmic wild-type p53.
Cytoplasmic sequestration was later proposed as an alternative mechanism of inactivation, but many studies have since reported an intact p53 pathway in neuroblastoma cell lines, as detected by nuclear p53 accumulation after DNA damage, intact DNA binding, transcriptional activation of target genes and the induction of apoptosis.
However, critical issues have been raised regarding p73alpha isoform roles, and their possible link to p53 are yet to be clarified in human NB using adenoviral infection approach.
The p73 gene is a p53 homologue localized at 1p36.3, a chromosomal region frequently deleted in neuroblastoma. p73 was originally considered an oncosuppressor gene.
Transduction of enhanced GFP (eGFP) into human neuroblastoma cell lines via a lentiviral vector significantly sensitized CHLA-20 (wild-type and functional TP53), and to a lesser extent CHLA-90 cells (multidrug-resistant, mutant, and nonfunctional TP53) to carboplatin, doxorubicin, etoposide, or melphalan, relative to cells transduced using the cell surface antigen CD80 as a selection marker.
As(2)O(3) provoked Bax expression in all tested neuroblastoma cell lines, including SK-N-BE(2) cells with mutated p53 and LA-N-1 cells, which have a deleted p53.