Cytokine profile of conditioned medium from human tumor cell lines after acute and fractionated doses of gamma radiation and its effect on survival of bystander tumor cells

Cytokines are known to play pivotal roles in cancer initiation, progression and pathogenesis. Accumulating evidences suggest differences in basal and stress-induced cytokine profiles of cancers with diverse origin. However, a comprehensive investigation characterising the cytokine profile of various tumor types after acute and fractionated doses of gamma-irradiation, and its effect on survival of bystander cells is not well known in literature. In the present study, we have evaluated the cytokine secretion profile of human tumor cell lines (HT1080, U373MG, HT29, A549 and MCF-7) either before (basal) or after acute (2,6 Gy) and fractionated doses (3 x 2 Gy) of gamma-irradiation in culture medium obtained from these cells by multiplex bead array/ELISA. Moreover, clonogenic assays were performed to evaluate the effect of conditioned medium (CM) on the survival and growth of respective cells. Based on the screening of 28 analytes, our results showed that the basal profiles of these cell lines varied considerably in terms of the number and magnitude of secreted factors, which was minimum in MCF-7. Interestingly, TNF-alpha, IL-1 beta, PDGF-AA, TGF-beta 1, fractalkine, IL-8, VEGF and GCSF were found in CM of all the cell lines. However, secretion of certain cytokines was cell line-specific. Moreover, CM caused increase in clonogenic survival of respective tumor cells (in the order HT1080 > U373MG > HT29 > A549> MCF-7), which was correlated with the levels of IL-1 beta, IL-6, IL-8, GMCSF and VEGF in their CM. After irradiation, the levels of most of the cytokines increased markedly in a dose dependent manner. The fold change in cytokine levels was lower in irradiated conditioned medium (ICM) of tumor cells collected after fractionated than respective acute dose, except in MCF-7. Interestingly, amongst these cell lines, the radiation-induced fold increase in cytokine levels was maximum in ICM of A549 cells. Moreover, bystander A549 cells treated with respective ICM showed dose dependent decrease in clonogenic survival. In conclusion, present study revealed the similarities and subtle differences in basal and radiation-induced cytokine profile of different tumor cell lines, and its influence on growth and survival of respective bystander cells. These findings may add a new dimension to our current understanding about role of cytokines in cancer biology. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.