[Tumor suppressive function of gelsolin]

We examined the expression of gelsolin in a murine ras tumor and a number of human stomach, colon, bladder, and lung cancer cell lines and tissues. In most of the cell lines and tumor tissues, gelsolin expression was undetectable or extremely low in comparison with its expression in normal epithelial cells. Upon the introduction of the exogenous human wild-type gelsolin cDNA into human cancer cell lines, the gelsolin transfectants had greatly reduced colony-forming ability and tumorigenicity in vivo. After UVC irradiation, the gelsolin-overexpressing bladder cancer cells demonstrated increased accumulation and/or protracted delay in G2 phase as compared to neotransfected cells. UVC-induced production of diacylglycerol was reduced in gelsolin-overexpressed UMUC-2 cells as compared to neo-transfected UMUC-2 cells. Levels of cyclin B in the synchronized and gelsolin-overexpressing UMUC-2 cells remained low during the G2 delay. To investigate the in vivo efficacy of gene therapy with the gelsolin tumor suppressor, we treated human urinary bladder cancers (UMUC-2 and DAB-1), inoculated in nude mice, with recombinant retrovirus packaging cells containing the human gelsolin cDNA. This gene therapy resulted in remarkable tumor growth inhibition, and prolonged survival time in the majority of animals. These observations suggest that gelsolin plays a key role as a tumor suppressor by regulating a G2 checkpoint function of cancer cells through phosphoinositol lipid metabolism, and demonstrate the potential of using the gelsolin tumor suppressor in human urinary bladder carcinoma.