Differential phosphodiesterase expression and cytosolic Ca2+ in human CNS tumour cells and in non-malignant and malignant cells of rat origin

A promising attempt in the field of tumour therapy is the modulation of intracellular, proliferation-associated signalling pathways. The role of cyclic nucleotide phosphodiesterases (PDEs), key enzymes in cAMP/cGMP signal transduction, was investigated in two human CNS tumour cell lines as well as in the rat glioblastoma cell line C6 in comparison with rat cerebellar astrocytes with the emphasis on target evaluation. We found differential PDE expression patterns in human CNS tumour cell lines as well as in CNS cells of rat origin. In human glioblastoma cells, intracellular cAMP and Ca(2+) levels correlated well with the PDE expression pattern. There were, however, marked differences in PDE expression and Ca(2+) kinetics between the human glioblastoma cell lines. In contrast to human epithelial tumour cells, shown earlier by us to express significantly enhanced cAMP-specific PDE activity, this was not the case in rat glioblastoma cells compared with non-malignant rat astrocytes. Despite different levels of PDE1 and PDE4 expression and activity, cyclic nucleotide and Ca(2+) levels in non-malignant and malignant rat CNS cells were similar. These in vitro data do not support the concept of PDE1C representing a target exploitable for drug treatment of malignant CNS tumours.