Background
Neuroblastoma is a common malignant disease of early childhood that exhibits a broad spectrum of clinical behaviour. As it is a disease of the sympaticoadrenal lineage of the neural crest, tumours can originate anywhere in the sympathetic nervous system[
1]. Risk is stratified based on age (reduced risk accompanies detection prior to 18 months of age), histopathological features and
MYCN amplification status[
1].
MYCN is a member of the
MYC family of oncogenes and is over-expressed preferentially in tumours of neuroectodermal origin, particularly neuroblastoma[
2].
MYCN was the first amplified oncogene with clinical significance identified, and its amplification is highly correlated with advanced neuroblastoma disease stage, aggressive growth and poor prognosis[
3].
The mechanism by which the MYCN transcription factor contributes to tumourigenesis remains unclear, although it has been shown to require gene amplification or protein stabilisation rather than mutation of the coding sequence[
4]. In a transgenic mouse model of neuroblastoma in which human MYCN (hMYCN) was targeted to neural crest cells, tumours develop similar to human neuroblastoma in respect to their location (primary and metastatic), histology, syntenic chromosomal changes and common amplification of
hMYCN[
5‐
7]. Administration of MYCN antisense oligonucleotides to these mice inhibits gene expression (by blocking translation or splicing of RNA or by degrading target RNA[
8]) and results in decreased tumour incidence, decreased tumour mass and increased morphological differentiation[
9]. However, it appears
MYCN is a conditionally favourable gene in neuroblastomas that do not have
MYCN amplification[
10,
11] and the effect of
MYCN expression in neuroblastomas from children of different ages or with disseminated disease may vary[
11,
12]. Thus, although the
MYCN expression level itself is not a strong prognostic indicator,
MYCN amplification and its attendant increase in MYCN protein remains one of the strongest indicators of the neuroblastoma malignant phenotype.
Neuroblastomas, like all tumours, must meet specific metabolic requirements to fuel their dysregulated growth and invasion into surrounding tissues. In most mammalian cells, glucose is catabolized to pyruvate that is further oxidized by mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation to produce more than 30 ATP per glucose molecule. In the presence of oxygen, the catabolism of glucose to lactic acid and 2 ATP (glycolysis) is inhibited ('Pasteur effect'). However, up-regulation of glycolysis in the presence of oxygen ('Warburg effect'[
13]) has been inferred in many cancers, including neuroblastomas[
14], by the use of imaging technology to visualise the avid uptake of
18fluorodeoxyglucose. Indeed, up-regulated glycolytic capability and overall tumour aggressiveness is being recognised as a common trait of many cancers (for example, see recent review[
15]). Certainly, a limited study of MYCN-inducible genes in a neuroblastoma cell line transfected with
MYCN showed genes involved in glycolysis were up-regulated compared to the non-transfected parental neuroblastoma cell[
16].
Here, we investigated whether there was a correlation between up-regulated glycolytic capabilities and the level of MYCN expression of three cell lines derived from patients with neuroblastoma who subsequently died of the disease. BE(2)-C cells were isolated from a two year old male who relapsed following intensive multiagent chemotherapy[
17], have significant
MYCN amplification[
18], are highly tumorigenic in nude mice[
19] and appear to represent the classic
MYCN-amplified, highly aggressive neuroblastoma phenotype. SH-EP cells are a substrate-adherent sub-clone of the SK-N-SH cell line isolated from a bone marrow metastases of a four year old female[
17,
20]. SH-EP cells do not show
MYCN amplification, have barely detectable levels of MYCN[
2,
21] and are completely non-tumorigenic in nude mice[
22] thus representing the opposite end of the biological spectrum for neuroblastoma phenotype in comparison to BE(2)-C cells. NBL-S cells have an intermediate malignant phenotype, showing no amplification of
MYCN but having a significantly prolonged MYCN half-life, and NBL-S cells are tumorigenic in nude mice[
23]. We found here that in these three neuroblastoma cell lines elevated MYCN expression levels did not correlate with up-regulation of the Warburg effect or a concomitant reduction in cellular reliance on mitochondrial bioenergetic contribution.
Methods
Cell lines and culture
BE(2)-C and SH-EP cells were generously supplied by Dr. J. Biedler (Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre, New York, NY). NBL-S cells were kindly supplied by Dr. S. Cohn (University of Chicago, Chicago, IL). The cell lines were maintained in Dulbecco's modified Eagle's medium (DMEM) supplemented with 10% (15% for NBL-S) heat-inactivated fetal calf serum, 2 mM L-glutamine and 10 mM HEPES.
RT-PCR of MYCN
Real-time (RT) PCR analysis of
MYCN gene expression, using
β
2-
microglobulin as an internal control, was performed on aliquots of cDNA from each cell line corresponding to 50 ng of RNA as previously described[
9].
Western immunoblotting of MYCN
1 × 10
7 cells for each cell line were lysed and 30 μg of protein resolved by SDS-PAGE, transferred to nitrocellulose membrane and membranes stained for MYCN as previously described[
11].
ATP production
5 × 105 cells were seeded per well of six well tissue culture plates and incubated 48 hours. Media covering cells was replaced with fresh DMEM, DMEM plus 0.2 μM rotenone (Sigma), DMEM containing pyruvate but no glucose (PNG media) (JRH Bioscience) or PNG media plus rotenone for 1 hour prior to cell lysis on ice in 25 mM Tris-phosphate pH 7.8, 10% glycerol, 1% Triton-X100, 1 mg/ml BSA, 2 mM EDTA, 2 mM DTT. 100 μl of sample was added per well of black 96 well plates and 100 μl of D-Luciferin buffer (90 mM DTT, 20 mM Tricine, 8 mM MgCl, 0.13 mM EDTA, 1.4 mM D-Luciferin, 0.8 mM acetyl CoA) added per well. 100 μl of Luciferase buffer (90 mM DTT, 20 mM Tricine, 8 mM MgCl, 0.13 mM EDTA, 20 kU/ml D-Luciferase, 0.8 mM acetyl CoA) was injected and luminescence per well measured using a Fluostar Optima plate reader. A set of standards of known ATP concentration was assayed simultaneously, allowing ATP quantification for each sample.
Protein content determination
Protein content in samples was measured using the Pierce Biotechnology (Rockford, IL) bicinchoninic acid (BCA) Protein Assay Kit as per manufacturers instructions.
Oxygen consumption
Oxygen consumption was measured as previously described[
24]. 1 × 10
6 neuroblastoma cells were incubated 48 h prior to collection by trypsinisation and resuspension in fresh, aerated Tris-based, Mg
2+-, Ca
2+-deficient (TD) buffer (137 mM NaCl, 5 mM KCl, 0.7 mM Na
2HPO
4, 25 mM Tris·HCl pH 7.4, at 25°C). 300 μl of each sample was loaded into a 37°C water-jacketed oxygraph chamber containing a small magnetic stirrer and connected to a circulating water bath at 37°C and a biological oxygen monitor (Strathkelvin Instruments, Scotland). Samples were read directly or after addition of 1 mM sodium azide for determination of azide-corrected oxygen consumption[
25]. Oxygen consumption was recorded over time and normalised to mg of protein (determine by BCA assay) for each sample.
Determination of mitochondrial energisation status
Cellular content of mitochondria and changes in mitochondrial membrane potential (Δψm) were determined as previously described[
26]. 1 × 10
6 neuroblastoma cells were incubated 48 h prior to collection by trypsinisation and resuspension in DMEM plus 150 nM tetramethyl rhodamine methyl ester (TMRM; Invitrogen). Cells were incubated at 37°C for 20 min, washed in DMEM and incubated for a further 20 min in DMEM plus 100 nM MitoTracker Green (MTG; Invitrogen). Cells were washed and resuspended in PBS prior to analysis by flow cytometry (Becton Dickinson FACSCalibur with CellQuest software).
Extracellular lactate levels were measured as previously described[
27]. 2 × 10
6 cells were seeded in 10 cm
2 tissue culture dishes and incubated for 48 hours. Culture media was replaced with DMEM plus HEPES with or without rotenone and incubated one hour. The media was removed, cell debris pelleted and 150 μl of each cell supernatant added per well of 96 well plate. 150 μl of glycine-hydrazine buffer (0.64 M glycine, 0.64 M hydrazine, 4.8 mM NAD
+, 2 U/ml LDH) was injected per well and reduction of NAD
+ by lactate dehydrogenase was monitored spectrophotometrically at 340 nm using a Fluostar Optima plate reader. A set of standards of known lactate concentration was assayed simultaneously, allowing quantification of lactate for each sample.
Discussion
Otto Warburg first posited that a critical notion for the understanding of tumourigenesis is the increased preference for glycolysis in the presence of oxygen which he observed in cancer cells[
13]. For many decades since then other researchers have tried to determine why this is so. Studies applying fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) have identified increased glucose uptake, critical in ensuring adequate generation of fuel to meet cellular energy requirements via inefficient glycolysis, as a hallmark of metastatic cancers in humans. This phenotype, namely elevated glucose uptake, irrespective of oxygen availability, correlates with the aggressiveness of non-small cell lung carcinoma[
34], lymphoma[
35], glioma[
36] and gastrointestinal[
37] tumours. One may infer from the commonality of the phenomenon that such a phenotype confers a significant competitive advantage in carcinogenesis. Hypotheses for the preferential use of glycolysis regardless of oxygen availability by cancer cells include: ensuring ATP production in environments with limited oxygen (such as that occurring when tumour growth outpaces vascularity[
38]) to fuel cell functions such as proliferation; production of reducing equivalents to mitigate reactive oxygen species (ROS) stress (ROS is produced by inefficiently respiring mitochondria)[
39]; or generation of a toxic environment[
40] which selects for cells with abrogated death signalling. We have examined here three neuroblastoma cell lines (derived from patients who ultimately died from the disease) for their glycolytic capacity, in order to determine whether increased aerobic glycolysis (Warburg effect) correlated with expression levels of MYCN, a factor implicated in the pathogenesis of neuroblastoma.
BE(2)-C cells expressing high levels of MYCN appeared to satisfy most of their energy requirements using oxidative phosphorylation; they consumed the greatest amount of oxygen and had the highest mitochondrial energisation capability. While the consumption of oxygen by BE(2)-C cells may consume oxygen to fuel ROS production[
41] rather than ATP generation, we believe our data suggests that highly malignant BE(2)-C cells do not have a glycolytic energy production capacity sufficient to meet their requirements. Certainly, BE(2)-C cells showed an 85% decrease in ATP generation and only moderate increases in lactate production when oxidative phosphorylation was inhibited. NBL-S cells, by comparison, with a lower (but still elevated) level of MYCN expression compared to BE(2)-C, appeared to have up-regulated glycolytic capabilities, possessing the ability to maintain ATP production capacity and generate significant levels of lactate when oxidative phosphorylation was inhibited. SH-EP cells, without
MYCN amplification and expressing no detectable MYCN, showed the lowest energy production capability and had no apparent preference for using either oxidative phosphorylation or glycolysis to meet their energy requirements. The reduction in use of oxidative phosphorylation by NBL-S and SH-EP cells may reflect their reduced reliance on it as the only pathway for energy generation.
Other groups have transfected cell lines with oncogenes other than
MYCN (
Ras or
Akt) and have found that increasing transformation in these cell lines correlates not only with increasing oncogene expression but also aerobic glycolysis[
42,
43]. And transfection of SH-EP neuroblastoma cell lines with
MYCN has also been shown to induce the up-regulation of several genes involved in glycolysis[
16]. While our results may appear different than previously published finding, we believe potential discrepancies are due to the methodology of the studies. The other studies created situations where the only change between cells being examined were those experimentally induced. We, on the other hand, have examined cells derived from neuroblastomas that evolved into malignant tumours
in vivo and presumably have many other adaptations to their environment than those simply regulating energy production. Indeed, when Boon et. al. analysed expression of genes involved in glycolysis (shown previously to be upregulated in SH-EP cell lines overexpressing exogenous MYCN) in two other neuroblastoma-derived cells lines (one with
MYCN amplification and one with a single MYCN copy) there was almost no induction of glycolytic genes[
16]. Thus, while the upregulation of glycolytic enzymes may be a factor in neuroblastoma malignancy, it may be independent of MYCN expression.
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by grants from the Australian Research Council, the National Health and Medical Research Council Australia, the Cancer Council New South Wales and the Cancer Institute New South Wales.
The Children's Cancer Institute Australia for Medical Research is affiliated with the University of New South Wales and Sydney Children's Hospital.
Competing interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Authors' contributions
LC performed the experiments under DS guidance, with the exception of the expression of MYCN that was performed at CCIA under MH guidance. DS and PN designed the experiments with input from LC and IH. DS wrote the manuscript with input from LC and MH. PN and MH conceived of the study. All authors read and approved the manuscript.