Tumor suppressor gene alterations of spontaneously malignant transformed cells from human embryonic muscle in vitro

Recent research has shown that mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) which were cultured for long time could transform malignantly, the transformation mechanism is not clear yet, it might be associated with the activation of oncogenes and inactivation of tumor suppressor genes. In our initial investigation, we found that the cells arising from human embryonic muscle could spontaneously transform into malignancy in vitro and we obtained 6 immortalized cell lines. In this study, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was used to assay several tumor suppressor genes of these cell lines, and homozygous deletions within chromosomal band 9p21 including MTAP (methylthioadenosine phosphorylase), p16 and p15 were detected. PCR products of p53 exons 7 and 8 of these novel tumor cell lines were assayed by sequencing, and the results showed high prevalence of mutations in these regions, the mutation rate reached as high as 8% in exon 7 and 14% in exon 8, and all of them were point mutations, the intron 7 changed more significantly, including piece deletion, insertion, frameshift and point mutation, it showed almost no similarity to that of the wt p53 sequence, that was totally different from other p53 mutation data published. All the mutation sequences were identical in 6 cell lines, this suggest that there may be a common mutation mechanism and strong selective advantage in these novel tumor cell lines over long-term culture. In conclusion, our research shows that the inactivation of tumor suppressor genes may play an important role in the process of malignant transformation of embryonic muscle cells in vitro.