Deficiency in the 15-kDa selenoprotein inhibits tumorigenicity and metastasis of colon cancer cells.

Selenium has cancer-preventive activity that is mediated, in part, through selenoproteins. The role of the 15-kDa selenoprotein (Sep15) in colon cancer was assessed by preparing and using mouse colon CT26 cells stably transfected with short hairpin RNA constructs targeting Sep15. Metabolic (75)Se labeling and Northern and Western blot analyses revealed that >90% of Sep15 was downregulated. Growth of the resulting Sep15-deficient CT26 cells was reduced (P < 0.01), and cells formed significantly (P < 0.001) fewer colonies in soft agar compared with control CT26 cells. Whereas most (14 of 15) BALB/c mice injected with control cells developed tumors, few (3 of 30) mice injected with Sep15-deficient cells developed tumors (P < 0.0001). The ability to form pulmonary metastases had similar results. Mice injected with the plasmid-transfected control cells had >250 lung metastases per mouse; however, mice injected with cells with downregulation of Sep15 only had 7.8 +/- 5.4 metastases. To investigate molecular targets affected by Sep15 status, gene expression patterns between control and knockdown CT26 cells were compared. Ingenuity Pathways Analysis was used to analyze the 1,045 genes that were significantly (P < 0.001) affected by Sep15 deficiency. The highest-scored biological functions were cancer and cellular growth and proliferation. Consistent with these observations, subsequent analyses revealed a G(2)-M cell cycle arrest in cells with targeted downregulation of Sep15. In contrast to CT26 cells, Sep15-targeted downregulation in Lewis lung carcinoma (LLC1) cells did not affect anchorage-dependent or anchorage-independent cell growth. These data suggest tissue specificity in the cancer-protective effects of Sep15 downregulation, which are mediated, at least in part, by influencing the cell cycle.