Suppression of tumorigenicity and induction of senescence on human endometrial carcinoma cell lines by transfer of normal human chromosomes.

The author examined the ability of human chromosomes derived from normal fibroblast cells to suppress the tumorigenicity of HHUA and Ishikawa cells, human endometrial carcinoma cell lines. Using DNA transfection, the human chromosome tagged with a selectable marker (the pSV2neo gene, which encodes resistance to the antibiotic, G418) was transferred to mouse A9 cells by cell hybridization and microcell fusion techniques. Thus, a library of mouse A9 clones containing individually a different human chromosome tagged with the pSV2neo plasmid DNA was constructed. Transfer by microcell fusion of either chromosome 1, 6, 9, 11 or 19 into the HHUA and Ishikawa cell lines was performed, and the abilities of the microcell hybrids to form tumors in nude mice were examined. The introduction of chromosome 19 had no effect on the tumorigenicity, whereas microcell hybrid clones with an introduced chromosome 1, 6 and 9 completely suppressed the tumorigenicity of the both lines. A decrease in tumor-take incidence in some but not all clones of HHUA cells was observed following the introduction of a chromosome 11. The nontumorigenic microcell hybrids with an introduced chromosome 1 differed from the nontumorigenic microcell hybrids with an introduced chromosome 6, 9, or 11. A large percentage of hybrids with chromosome 1 sensed and/or showed alterations in cellular morphology and transformed growth properties in vitro on the both cell lines. These results indicate that more than one chromosome carries a tumor suppressor gene(s) for human endometrial carcinoma cell lines, and indicate that normal human chromosome 1 carries gene(s) which suppresses the immortalization. This supports the hypothesis that multiple tumor suppressor gene(s) control the various tumorigenic phenotypes at the different step during process of neoplastic development.