The role of calmodulin in human renal cell carcinoma

Calmodulin is a ubiquitous intracellular calcium binding protein which has been shown to be associated with cell cycling. Previous studies using animal tumor models have suggested a positive correlation between tumor calmodulin content and rate of tumor growth. We studied the role of calmodulin in renal cell carcinoma (RCC) cell lines and compared this with short term normal fetal kidney cell lines. The effects of calmodulin inhibition was determined using the calmodulin inhibitor W13 (Naphthalene-sulfonamide) and its less active partner W12. Cell size, calmodulin content and inhibition studies using W13 did not reveal any simple correlations for the RCC cell lines, although the RCC lines did have a higher content than the fetal kidney cell lines. Calmodulin content determination of RCC and normal adult kidney tissue failed to show any difference. We conclude that, contrary to previous reports using animal models, there is no simple relationship between tumor growth rates and calmodulin content for human RCC.