Effect of epidermal growth factor/transforming growth factor alpha and transforming growth factor beta 1 on growth in vitro of rat urinary bladder carcinoma cells.

The response to growth factor stimulation was evaluated in clonally derived rat bladder carcinoma cell lines, ranging from nontumorigenic to tumorigenic and metastatic, in athymic nude mice. In the nontumorigenic cell line D44c, epidermal growth factor (EGF)/transforming growth factor (TGF) alpha weakly stimulated anchorage-dependent, but not -independent, growth. In tumorigenic/nonmetastatic cells (G1-200 Cl-17), EGF/TGF-alpha stimulated markedly anchorage-independent, but marginally anchorage-dependent growth, whereas TGF-beta 1 inhibited anchorage-independent growth and DNA synthesis. In the highly tumorigenic/metastatic cell line LMC19, EGF/TGF-alpha stimulated anchorage-dependent growth weakly and anchorage-independent growth strongly. In these cells, TGF-beta 1 did not inhibit anchorage-independent growth and DNA synthesis but increased the size of colonies irrespective of the presence of EGF, and some cells were scattered around colonies in soft agar. None of the cell lines showed evidence of TGF-alpha-specific mRNA transcription. Expression of TGF-beta 1 mRNA increased in parallel to the biological aggressiveness of the cell lines. Highly tumorigenic and metastatic cells also demonstrated gelatinase activity involving 72 kilodalton and 92 kilodalton types. Our data suggest that the growth-stimulatory effect of EGF/TGF-alpha in soft agar may be limited to cells that are already tumorigenic and that EGF/TGF-alpha is not effective in making nontumorigenic cells become tumorigenic (or in making nontumorigenic cells grow in soft agar).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)