Inhibitory effects of cytokines on ovarian and endometrial carcinoma cells in vitro with special reference to induction of specific transcriptional regulators.

In the present study, we have investigated the effects of interferons-alpha (IFN-alpha) and -gamma (IFN-gamma), interleukin-10 (IL-10) and -13 (IL-13), transforming growth factor-beta1 (TGF-beta1), granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF), and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha) on cell proliferation and induction of transcription factors AP-1 and NF-kappaB in UM-EC-3 human endometrial adenocarcinoma cells and UT-OC-5 ovarian carcinoma cells in vitro. In addition, cellular DNA was extracted to study if any of these factors is able to induce apoptosis. In UM-EC-3 cell line DNA synthesis was inhibited by GM-CSF, IL-10, IL-13, TGF-beta1, IFN-alpha, and IFN-gamma after 48 and 72 h in culture, whereas TNF-alpha had no significant effect on cell proliferation in any of the experiments. The inhibition of DNA synthesis was similarly observed in UT-OC-5 ovarian carcinoma cells by IL-10, TNF-alpha, and IFN-gamma after 48 and 72 h, whereas IFN-alpha had no statistically significant effect. An inhibitory effect of GM-CSF was observed only after 48 h and TGF-beta after 72 h in culture, respectively. Transcription factors AP-1 and NF-kappaB were both constitutively active in UM-EC-3 and UT-OC-5 cells. The binding activity of AP-1 was found to be stimulated by all growth-inhibitory cytokines studied in both cell lines, whereas the specific binding activity of NF-kappaB was affected moderately only by TNF-alpha in UT-OC-5 ovarian carcinoma cells. No signs of DNA fragmentation typical of apoptosis were observed in any of these studies.