Heterogenous susceptibility to CD95-induced apoptosis in melanoma cells correlates with bcl-2 and bcl-x expression and is sensitive to modulation by interferon-γ

Abstract

The expression and functionality of the Fas receptor (CD95/APO-1) play an important role for the maintenance of tissue homeostasis. Various types of tumor cells have been shown to escape immune recognition by constitutive resistance to CD95-mediated apoptosis. Furthermore, several apoptosis-related proteins have been reported to influence CD95 sensitivity. We tested an unselected panel of 11 melanoma cell lines for sensitivity to CD95 and the corresponding expression of CD95, CD95L, bcl-2, bcl-x, bcl-xS, bax and FLIP proteins. Despite detection of CD95 cell-surface expression in 9 out of the 11 cell lines tested, only 3 melanoma cell lines were sensitive to anti-CD95-MAb-induced cell death. Apoptosis-related proteins CD95L, bcl-2, bcl-x, bcl-xS and bax were found to be heterogenously expressed in different melanoma cell lines tested. The susceptibility of melanoma cells to anti-CD95-MAb-mediated apoptosis was associated with low protein expression of both bcl-2 and bcl-x. The level of CD95 cell-surface expression in melanoma cells was no indicator for CD95 sensitivity. Furthermore, FLIP protein was detectable in 7 out of the 11 cell lines, but showed no correlation to CD95 sensitivity. Certain cytokines have been described as modulating the susceptibility of tumor cells to CD95-induced cell death. Since IFN-α was proved to be clinically efficient in melanoma therapy, we tested whether interferons have the ability to induce sensitivity to CD95 in primarily resistant melanoma cell lines. Here we show that IFN-γ, but not IFN-α, is able to increase the susceptibility of sensitive cell lines and to induce CD95 sensitivity in resistant melanoma cell lines, accompanied by up-regulation of the protein expression level of CD95 and/or bcl-xS. © 1999 Wiley-Liss, Inc.