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The in vivo mutagenesis from ethyl methanesulfonate (EMS) was investigated by the original Pig-a assay, which measures Pig-a mutant cells in red blood cells, and the PIGRET assay, which uses reticulocytes as a part of a collaborative study supported by the Japan Health Sciences Foundation. For the studies with the Pig-a assay, three dose levels of EMS (25, 50 and 100 mg/kg/day) were given orally to 6-week-old male F344 rats for 28 days, and peripheral blood was sampled just before the start of dosing, and after dosing for 1, 2 and 4 weeks with EMS. In the studies with the PIGRET assay, single oral dosing at two dose levels (360 and 720 mg/kg) of EMS was employed and peripheral blood was collected just before dosing, and 1 and 2 weeks after dosing of EMS. As the results, a statistically significant increase in mutant frequency of the Pig-a gene was observed at 2 and 4 weeks, but not at one week after dosing of EMS in the Pig-a assay. In the PIGRET assay, on the other hand, a statistically significant increase in mutant frequency was obtained at one week after the dosing. These results indicate that the PIGRET assay can detect Pig-a mutants much earlier than the original Pig-a assay can by focusing on reticulocytes rather than red blood cells as the target cell population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to determine the role of tumor-derived angiogenic factors in solid tumor formation. We compared the angiogenic potential of tumorigenic and non-tumorigenic human tumor cell lines. All tumorigenic cell lines induced angiogenesis in vivo and their angiogenesis-inducing abilities were higher than those of the other non-tumorigenic cell lines. This in vivo angiogenic potential was well correlated with the in vitro endothelial cell growth-stimulating activity contained in the cell extract or conditioned medium of each cell line. The endothelial cell growth-stimulating activities of these cell lines were completely inhibited by neutralizing antibodies to basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF), acidic FGF (aFGF) or vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF). Furthermore, the levels of tumor-derived endothelial cell growth-stimulating activities depended on the amounts of angiogenic factors such as VEGF and bFGF produced by tumor cells. Although VEGF transcripts were detected in all of the cell lines by RT-PCR assay, the non-tumorigenic cell lines showed poor productivity of VEGF as well as FGFs and had less or non-potency for endothelial cell growth stimulation. These findings suggest that the increase in production of angiogenic factors by tumor cells is necessary for their in vivo angiogenic and tumorigenic potentials, and that VEGF and FGFs are the major mediators of tumor-induced angiogenesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]