EVIDENCE FOR A GROWTH EFFECT OF EPIDERMAL GROWTH-FACTOR ON MDA-MB-231 BREAST-CANCER CELLS

MDA-MB-231 is a breast epithelial cell line which possesses large amounts of epidermal growth factor (EGF) receptor on its cell surface but does not respond to EGF under standard culture conditions. 8-bromo-cyclic AMP (8Br-cAMP) and cholera-toxin treatments inhibit its growth by increasing its intracellular cAMP level. However, when inhibited in this way, MDA-MB-231 remains unresponsive to EGF. Similar effects-cAMP accumulation and inhibition of cell growth-are produced by forskolin. In addition, this substance specifically blocks MDA-MB-231 cells in G1 phase of the cell cycle. EGF is able to reverse the effect of forskolin on cell proliferation and prevents accumulation of cells in G1 phase without any change of cAMP level. Thus, only when inhibiting cell growth with forskolin does a mitogenic effect of EGF become evident. As cAMP is increased to a similar degree by all three compounds, yet only the effect of forskolin is antagonised by EGF, we suggest that a non-cAMP-mediated effect of forskolin must be considered to explain this effect. In contrast, the mitogenic effect of EGF on the NPM14T4/9 breast epithelial cell line does not change in the presence of forskolin.