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Loss of Protein Inhibitors of Activated STAT-3 Expression in Glioblastoma Multiforme Tumors: Implications for STAT-3 Activation and Gene Expression

Authors' Affiliations: Departments of ¹ Cell Biology, ² Neurology, and ³ Surgery and ⁴ Division of Neuropathology, Department of Pathology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama and ⁵ Department of Physiology, College of Medicine, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Korea

Requests for reprints: Etty N. Benveniste, Department of Cell Biology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 1918 University Boulevard, MCLM 395A, Birmingham, AL 35294-0005. Phone: 205-934-7667; Fax: 205-975-6748; E-mail: tika{at}uab.edu.

Purpose: STATs activate transcription in response to numerous cytokines, controlling proliferation, gene expression, and apoptosis. Aberrant activation of STAT proteins, particularly STAT-3, is implicated in the pathogenesis of many cancers, including GBM, by promoting cell cycle progression, stimulating angiogenesis, and impairing tumor immune surveillance. Little is known about the endogenous STAT inhibitors, the PIAS proteins, in human malignancies. The objective of this study was to examine the expression of STAT-3 and its negative regulator, PIAS3, in human tissue samples from control and GBM brains.

Experimental Design: Control and GBM human tissues were analyzed by immunoblotting and immunohistochemistry to determine the activation status of STAT-3 and expression of the PIAS3 protein. The functional consequence of PIAS3 inhibition by small interfering RNA or PIAS3 overexpression in GBM cells was determined by examining cell proliferation, STAT-3 transcriptional activity, and STAT-3 target gene expression. This was accomplished using [³H]TdR incorporation, STAT-3 dominant-negative constructs, reverse transcription-PCR, and immunoblotting.

Results and Conclusions: STAT-3 activation, as assessed by tyrosine and serine phosphorylation, was elevated in GBM tissue compared with control tissue. Interestingly, we observed expression of PIAS3 in control tissue, whereas PIAS3 protein expression in GBM tissue was greatly reduced. Inhibition of PIAS3 resulted in enhanced glioblastoma cellular proliferation. Conversely, PIAS3 overexpression inhibited STAT-3 transcriptional activity, expression of STAT-3–regulated genes, and cell proliferation. We propose that the loss of PIAS3 in GBM contributes to enhanced STAT-3 transcriptional activity and subsequent cell proliferation.