Expression of urokinase and its receptor in invasive and non-invasive prostate cancer cell lines

We previously reported that extracellular matrix invasion by the prostate cancer cell lines, PC-3 and DU-145 was contingent on endogenous urokinase being bound to a specific cell surface receptor. The present study was undertaken to characterize the expression of both urokinase and its receptor in the non-invasive LNCaP and the invasive PC-3 and DU-145 prostate cells. Northern blotting indicated that the invasive PC-3 cells, which secreted 10 times more urokinase (680 ng/ml per 10(6) cells per 48 h) than DU-145 cells (63 ng/ml per 10(6) cells per 48 h), had the most abundant transcript for the plasminogen activator. This, at least, partly reflected a 3 fold amplification of the urokinase gene in the PC-3 cells. In contrast, urokinase-specific transcript could not be detected in the non-invasive LNCaP cells previously characterized as being negative for urokinase protein. Southern blotting indicated that this was not a consequence of deletion of the urokinase gene. Crosslinking of radiolabelled aminoterminal fragment of urokinase to the cell surface indicated the presence of a 51 kDa receptor in extracts of the invasive PC-3 and DU-145 cells but not in extracts of the non-invasive LNCaP cells. The amount of binding protein correlated well with binding capacities calculated by Scatchard analysis. In contrast, the steady state level of urokinase receptor transcript was a poor predictor of receptor display. PC-3 cells, which were equipped with 25,000 receptors per cell had 2.5 fold more steady state transcript than DU-145 cells which displayed 93,000 binding sites per cell.