Cadmium induces c-myc, p53, and c-jun expression in normal human prostate epithelial cells as a prelude to apoptosis.

Cadmium is a suspected human prostatic carcinogen shown to induce prostatic tumors and proliferative lesions in rats. The carcinogenic mechanism of cadmium is unknown, but its poor mutagenicity points toward an epigenetic mechanism. Here we studied the effect of cadmium on genes involved in growth regulation of prostate epithelial cell using the human prostate epithelial cell line RWPE-1, which is immortalized but not transformed and is androgen-responsive. Treatment with 10 microM cadmium resulted in transient increases in c-myc and p53 mRNA levels that peaked at 2-fold and 1.4-fold, respectively, compared to control after 2 h. In contrast, c-jun mRNA levels were increased >3-fold after 2, 4, and 6 h and 20-fold after 24 h. DNA synthesis decreased after 24 h of cadmium exposure. Further study revealed a significant increase in apoptosis after 48 h of cadmium exposure. However, approximately 35% of the cells were still viable and appeared normal, indicating this subpopulation was more resistant to cadmium. Furthermore, these resistant cells had 2.5-fold more metallothionein than untreated control cells. This suggests that cadmium could act to select for apoptotic-defective cells in vivo, thereby increasing the likelihood of tumor formation. This work represents the first description of cadmium affecting oncogene expression in a human cell model of a potential in vivo target site of cadmium carcinogenesis. Copyright 2000 Academic Press.