Phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase mediates the ability of retinol to decrease colorectal cancer cell invasion.

Previously, we showed that retinol (vitamin A) decreased both colorectal cancer cell invasion and phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) activity through a retinoic acid receptor-independent mechanism. Here, we determined if these phenomena were related by using parental HCT-116 cells that harbor 1 allele of wild-type PI3K and 1 allele of constitutively active (ca) PI3K and 2 mutant HCT-116 cell lines homozygous for caPI3K. In vitro, treatment of parental HCT-116 cells with 10 μM retinol reduced cell invasion whereas treatment of mutant HCT-116 cell lines with retinol did not. Treatment with 10 μM retinol also decreased the activity of matrixmetalloproteinase-9 and increased tissue inhibitor of matrixmetalloproteinase-I levels in parental, but not mutant, HCT-116 cells. Finally, parental or mutant cells were intrasplenically injected into athymic mice consuming diets with or without supplemental vitamin A. As expected, vitamin A supplementation tended (P = 0.18) to reduce the incidence of metastases in mice injected with the parental cell line and consuming the supplemented diet. In contrast, metastatic incidence was not affected (P = 1.00) by vitamin A supplementation in mice injected with mutant cells. These data indicate that the capacity of retinol to inhibit PI3K activity confers its ability to decrease colorectal cancer metastasis.