High sensitivity of human melanoma cell lines to the growth inhibitory activity of mycoplasmal arginine deiminase in vitro
K. Sugimura, T. Ohno, T. Kusuyama and I. AzumaMelanoma Research (1992), Vol. 2 pages 191-196
Arginine deiminase (AD) is a potent growth inhibitor for some but not all tumour cell lines in vitro. As AD catalyzes the direct conversion of L-arginine to L-citrulline, the AD-sensitivity of various tumour cells might be attributed to the levels of urea cycle enzymes involved in L-arginine biosynthesis. This study demonstrated that human melanoma cells were highly sensitive to growth inhibitory activity AD. Five melanoma cell lines tested also exhibited reduced argininosuccinate synthetase (ASS) gene expression - being almost absent in four cell lines and at low level in one cell line. This resulted in an inability of the cells to utilize L-citrulline for growth. Based on the tissue-specific regulation of ASS gene, the feature of melanomas suggests that it might be possible to develop agents with strong AD activity for chemotherapeutic use for human melanomas in vivo.