Girolline interferes with cell-cycle progression, but not with translation

Girolline is a 2-aminoimidazole derivative with cytotoxic activity. It affects the survival of exponentially growing leukaemic cultured cells and has a significant antitumour activity on grafted murine tumours in vivo. In vitro studies showed that girolline affected protein synthesis by interfering with the translation termination process. Here, we investigate the effect of girolline on translation termination in human cultured cells. We show that girolline neither induces an increase in translational readthrough of stop codons nor affects the polysome profile in treated cells. This suggests that girolline does not act on translation in vivo. Then, we examine the effect of girolline on cell-cycle progression and we show that girolline induces an arrest of the cell cycle at the G2 stage.