Induction of the death-promoting gene bax-α sensitizes cultured breast-cancer cells to drug-induced apoptosis
✍ Scribed by Christian Wagener; Ralf C. Bargou; Peter T. Daniel; Kurt Bommert; Markus Y. Mapara; Hans D. Royer; Bernd Dörken
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1996
- Tongue
- French
- Weight
- 487 KB
- Volume
- 67
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0020-7136
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✦ Synopsis
Resistance to apoptosis plays an important role in malignancies that are refractory to chemotherapy treatment. Recently we have shown that the expression of bax-a, a death-promoting member of the bcl-2 family, is down-regulated in breast cancer and have provided evidence that low bax expression might contribute to the pathogenesis of breast cancer. In this study we were able to demonstrate the role of thisgene in chemotherapyinduced apoptosis. We transfected box-a into the breast-cancer cell lines R30C and MCF-7 under the control of an inducible tetracycline-dependent expression system. Induction of bax-a expression did not affect viability by itself but strongly increased chemosensitivity to epirubicin. We were able to demonstrate that this sensitization is due to apoptosis. These data might explain the recently published observation that reduced expression of bax is associated with poor response rates to chemotherapy in breast cancer.
o 1996