Activation of paracrine growth factors by heparan sulphate induced by glucocorticoid in A549 lung carcinoma cells.

Alkaline phosphatase, a marker of differentiation in the human alveolar adenocarcinoma cell line A549, is inducible by conditioned medium from lung fibroblasts and by cytokines including oncostatin M and interleukin 6, but only in the presence of a glucocorticoid, dexamethasone. Dexamethasone was shown to induce incorporation of [3H]glucosamine into three fractions of medium and cell trypsinate from subconfluent A549 cells, eluting from DEAE ion-exchange chromatography. The first peak did not correspond to any of the unlabelled glycosaminoglycans and was not characterized further. Induction was seen in two other peaks, corresponding to hyaluronic acid and heparan sulphate. Of these, heparan sulphate, eluting as one well-defined peak (referred to as HS1) and another of lower activity and less well defined (HS2), was selected as the most likely to interact with growth factors and cytokines and was isolated from the eluate, concentrated and desalted, and used in alkaline phosphatase induction experiments in place of dexamethasone. HS1 isolated from the medium (HS1m) of subconfluent A549 cells was shown to replace dexamethasone in induction experiments with fibroblast-conditioned medium, oncostatin M and interleukin 6. HS1 from the cell trypsinate and HS2 from the medium and trypsinate were inactive. As the activity of HS1m could be abolished by heparinase and heparitinase but not by chondroitinase ABC, it was concluded that HS1m was a fraction of heparan sulphate involved in the regulation of paracrine growth factor activity in lung fibroblast-conditioned medium, and in the regulation of other growth factors with potential roles in the paracrine control of cell differentiation.