Evidence that basal activity, but not transactivation, of the epidermal growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase is required for insulin-like growth factor I-induced activation of extracellular signal-regulated kinase in oral carcinoma cells.

IGF-I receptor (IGF-IR) is involved in numerous biological functions via its major downstream signaling molecules, extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) and phosphatidylinositol 3'-kinase/Akt. The IGF-I-induced activation of ERK, but not that of Akt, is reportedly mediated by the transactivation of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) tyrosine kinase (TK). The mechanism for the EGFR-TK-dependent activation, however, still remains largely unknown. We found that an oral carcinoma cell line overexpressing EGFR, Ca9-22, exhibited IGF-I-induced activation of both Akt and ERK, but that only the latter was significantly decreased by a specific inhibitor of EGFR-TK, tyrphostin AG1478. In this report we provide evidence for the existence in this cell line of a novel mechanism by which IGF-I induces ERK activation in a manner that is dependent on the basal level of EGFR-TK activity, but is independent of receptor transactivation. In addition, we show that c-Raf kinase is likely to be a key regulator of this mechanism. The elucidation of such a unique mechanism involving cross-talk between EGFR and heterologous receptors may shed additional light on the clinical use of EGFR-TK inhibitors in antitumor therapies.