Abstract
The effects of a synthetic serine protease inhibitor, FOY-305, and its derivatives, ONO-3403 and FO-349, on the proliferation of mouse NIH3T3 cells were investigated. At concentrations between 10 and 100 μg/ml, three protease inhibitors induced a moderate suppression of cell growth. However, only ONO-3403 showed severe cytotoxicity at concentrations higher than 200 μg/ml. Results of TUNEL staining and DNA fragmentation analysis indicated that ONO-3403 induced apoptosis at the high concentrations. Biochemical analysis has shown that ONO-3403 directly enhanced the amidolytic activity of purified μ-calpain at a concentration higher than 100 μg/ml while FOY-305 and FO-349 showed less effects. When the cell extract was incubated in the presence of ONO-3403, specific degradation of a few proteins including protein kinase C was observed. Similar degradation was also observed by addition of μ-calpain to the extract. These results imply that ONO-3403 is a specific stimulator of calpain. It seems reasonable to conclude that increase in calpain activity results in apoptosis.
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This work was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research from the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture of Japan.
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Hiwasa, T. Induction of apoptosis by a calpain stimulator, ONO-3403. Apoptosis 1, 75–80 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00142081
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00142081