Enhancement of pulmonary metastasis formation and gamma-glutamyltranspeptidase activity in B16 melanoma induced by differentiation in vitro.

B16 melanoma sublines (B16-F10-BL6 and B16-F1) exhibited elevated adenosine 3',5'-cyclic monophosphate (cAMP) levels when cultured in Dulbecco's modified Eagle's medium (DMEM) in comparison to cells in RPMI-1640 medium. In parallel, cells cultured in DMEM had increased tyrosinase activity, melanization and dendrite formation, all markers of melanoma differentiation. Also, the proliferative rates of both cell lines were decreased by 80-85% when cultured in DMEM relative to cells maintained in RPMI-1640 medium. In these studies, elevated levels of the melanin precursors tyrosine (Tyr) and phenylalanine (Phe) found in DMEM were shown not to be solely responsible for the phenotypic changes observed with DMEM. Both BL6 and B16-F1 cell lines formed more experimental pulmonary tumor metastasis in syngeneic C57BL/6 mice when maintained in DMEM vs RPMI-1640 medium. Analysis of metastasis formation in nude mice with normal and depleted natural killer (NK) cell activity revealed that the enhanced lung colonizing capacity of the BL6 cells maintained in DMEM was independent of the function of T-cell or NK-cell-mediated immunity. A close association between metastatic ability of tested lines and the expression of the membrane-associated enzyme gamma-glutamyltranspeptidase (gamma-GTPase, EC 2.3.2.2) was observed. The highly metastatic BL6 cell line had 20-fold higher levels of gamma-GTPase activity than the weakly metastatic B16-F1 cell line. Both cell lines, when grown in DMEM, had elevated gamma-GTPase activity that paralleled augmentation of metastatic ability. The dramatic changes in lung-colonizing capacity of the variant B16 melanoma cells maintained in DMEM in contrast to those grown in RPMI-1640 medium may serve as a useful model in understanding certain steps involved in triggering cell differentiation as well as metastasis development.