Cysteine protease inhibitors isolated from human malignant melanoma tissue

Cysteine protease inhibitors that specifically reacted with several cysteine proteases were found in KSCN extract of human melanoma tissue. From 30 gm of the tissue, approximately 593.5 U inhibitor was obtained. The inhibitors were adsorbed on a papain-Sepharose column and could be eluted with 10 mmol/L phosphate buffer, pH 6.0, containing NaCl or KCl, or with 20 mmol/L acetate buffer, pH 4.0, containing KSCN. They revealed a strong inhibitory activity for cysteine proteases such as ficin, papain, and cathepsin B, but did not react with cysteine protease bromelain or serine protease trypsin. No immunologic relationship was confirmed between the inhibitor and other well-known plasma inhibitors such as alpha 1-antitrypsin, alpha 2-macroglobulin, alpha 1-antichymotrypsin, antithrombin III, C1-in-activator, and alpha 2-plasmin inhibitor. With Sephadex G-100, two main peaks of molecular weight 40,000 and 10,000 were detected in the KSCN extract of the human melanoma tissue. However, the inhibitors revealed three molecular weights of 10,000, 25,000, and 80,000 when estimated by Sephadex G-100 gel filtration after papain-Sepharose affinity chromatography. On the other hand, the molecular weights of the inhibitors changed to two peaks of 25,000 and 10,000 on rechromatography with a papain-Sepharose column.