Nuclear Topoisomerase II Activity Changes During HL-60 Leukemic Cell Differentiation: Alterations in Drug Sensitivity and pH Dependency

Differentiated and exponentially growing HL60 cells exhibit different sensitivity to some genotoxic agents in the comet assay

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of the cell differentiation status on the sensitivity to genotoxic insults. For this, we utilized the comet assay to test the DNA damage after treatment with 5 different substances with different mechanism of action in human promyelocytic HL60 cells with or without cell differentiation. A 4-hour MMS treatment induced a significant and concentration-dependent increase in DNA damage for both differentiated and undifferentiated cells, but the difference in sensitivity was only significant at the highest concentration. A 4-hour doxorubicin treatment did not induce DNA damage in differentiated HL60 cells, while it did in undifferentiated cells with its highest tested concentration. A one-hour etoposide treatment caused significant increase in DNA damage concentration dependently in both cell variants. This DNA damage was significantly higher in undifferentiated HL60 cells with several tested concentrations of etoposide. The treatment with the oxidizing substances hydrogen peroxide and potassium bromate yielded significant DNA damage induction in both undifferentiated and differentiated cells with no difference according to the differentiation status. Doxorubicin and etoposide are known to inhibit topoisomerase II. The activity of this enzyme has been shown to be higher in undifferentiated actively proliferating cells than in differentiated cells. This may be of relevance when exposures to topoisomerase-inhibiting compounds or the genotoxicity of compounds with unknown mechanism of action are assessed in routine testing.

Detection of human topoisomerase II alpha in cell lines and tissues: characterization of five novel monoclonal antibodies

We report five novel monoclonal antibodies (Ki-S1, Ki-S4, Ki-S6, Ki-S7, and Ki-S8) reactive with a proliferation-related nuclear antigen. In immunoprecipitation and Western blot experiments using crude nuclear extracts, they recognized a protein of 170 kD that, after proteolytic digestion of the immunoprecipitate and sequencing of the resulting peptides, was identified as the alpha-isoform of human topoisomerase II. This was confirmed by testing the antibodies on a highly purified enzyme preparation. Crossreactivity with topoisomerase II beta was ruled out by testing the antibodies on crude extracts from yeast cells expressing the beta-isoform exclusively. The antibodies bind the antigen with different affinities and at different epitopes, apparently located within the carboxyl third of the enzyme. All five antibodies are suitable for archival material after adequate antigen retrieval, thereby enabling retrospective studies. This report illustrates the tissue and subcellular distribution of the antigen through the cell cycle by immunohistochemistry and confocal fluorescence microscopy. The antibodies will be useful tools in further analysis of morphological and functional aspects of topoisomerase II and may serve diagnostic purposes, as well as providing prognostic information in tumor pathology.

Correlation between the DNA-binding affinity of topoisomerase inhibiting drugs and their capacity to induce hematopoetic cell differentiation

There is accumulating evidence that both type I and type II DNA-topoisomerases play a key role in cellular differentiation. Human HL-60 leukemia cells can be induced to monocytic or granulocytic differentiation with various compounds; amongst them camptothecin, a topoisomerase I inhibitor and VP-16, VM-26 and mitoxantrone, all potent topoisomerase II inhibitors. During HL-60 cell differentiation topoisomerase I activity increases and topoisomerase II activity decreases. The two isoenzymes topoisomerase II alpha and topoisomerase II beta seem to have different physiological functions in highly proliferating cells, G0 cells and differentiated cells as their expression is regulated differently. In concentrations sublethal to undifferentiated cells, m-AMSA, also a potent topoisomerase II inhibitor, is able to prevent DMSO-induced granulocytic HL-60 cell differentiation. In drug-sensitive cells derived from several sources (mouse erythroleukemia, human gastric carcinoma, human leukemia), we found a functional heterogeneity of topoisomerase activity which is altered specifically during cellular differentiation. The isoactivities can be separated by their different pH and salt requirements and they exhibit different sensitivity to topoisomerase II inhibiting drugs. Functional heterogeneity of topoisomerases seems to be a prerequisite to high drug sensitivity of the cells, since drug-resistant sublines in our experiments do not exhibit this heterogeneity. We propose that the topoisomerase II inhibiting drugs which are able to induce differentiation, namely the epipodophyllotoxines VP-16 and VM-26, inhibit subfractions of the topoisomerase II pool which are necessary to maintain the undifferentiated status of the cells. These drugs induce differentiation in concentrations 10-100-fold below the lethal dose, the concentration must be sufficient to inhibit topoisomerase II but well below the concentration to induce the cleavable complex. This might be the reason that anthracyclines with a high DNA binding affinity have low differentiation-inducing capacity.

Activation of topoisomerase II during partial purification by heparin-Sepharose chromatography

Partial purification of topoisomerase II from small samples (10(7)-10(8) cells) of human leukaemic cells was achieved by isolation of cell nuclei, hyper-osmotic extraction of nuclear proteins, sorption of nuclear proteins by heparin-Sepharose and elution with potassium phosphate. Similar results were obtained by gradient and batchwise elution. The calatylic activity of topoisomerase increased ca. eightfold after removal of ca. 95% of the contaminating nuclear proteins. The conserved enzymatic activity after partial purification indicates that the enzyme was not damaged. The half-life of enzymatic activity is increased by the chromatographic procedure. Owing to its high yield and technical simplicity, this could be a candidate procedure for the study of topoisomerase II in patient-derived blood samples.