Nitric oxide reduces tumor cell adhesion to isolated rat postcapillary venules

Adhesion of circulating tumor cells to microvascular endothelium plays an important role in tumor metastasis to distant organs. The purpose of this study was to determine whether nitric oxide (NO) would attenuate tumor cell adhesion (TCA) to naive or lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-treated postcapillary venules. A melanoma cell line, RPMI 1846, was shown to be much more adhesive to postcapillary venules isolated from rat mesentery than to corresponding precapillary arterioles. Although venules exposed to LPS for 4 h demonstrated an increased adhesivity for the melanoma cells, TCA to LPS-treated arterioles was not altered. Isolated venules exposed to DETA/NO (1 mM), an NO donor, for 30 min prior to tumor cell perfusion prevented the increment in adhesion induced by LPS and attenuated TCA to naive postcapillary venules. While L-arginine (100 microM), an NO precursor, failed to decrease TCA to naive postcapillary venules, this treatment abolished LPS-stimulated TCA to postcapillary venules. The effect of L-arginine was reversed by administration of N(omega)-nitro-L-arginine methyl ester (L-NAME, 100 microM), an NO synthase (NOS) inhibitor. These observations indicate that both exogenous and endogenous NO modulate TCA to postcapillary venules. To assess the role of NO-induced activation of cGMP in the reduction in TCA produced by DETA/NO, two additional series of experiments were conducted. In the first series, LY-83583 (10 microM), a guanylyl cyclase inhibitor, was shown to completely reverse the effect of DETA/NO on TCA to both naive and LPS-activated postcapillary venules. On the other hand, administration of 8-bromoguanosine 3',5'-cyclic monophosphate (8-B-cGMP) (1 mM), a cell permeant cGMP analog, mimicked the effect of DETA/NO and reduced TCA to LPS-stimulated postcapillary venules. These data suggest that (a) tumor cells are more likely to adhere to postcapillary venules than to corresponding precapillary arterioles, (b) LPS enhances TCA to postcapillary venules, (c) both exogenously applied (DETA/NO) and endogenously generated (L-arginine) NO attenuate the enhanced adhesion induced by LPS, but only DETA/NO reduced TCA to naive postcapillary venules, and (d) the NO-induced reduction in TCA to LPS-activated postcapillary venules occurs by a cGMP-dependent mechanism.