Human tumor cell lines treated with interferon-alpha-2a

A hallmark of resistance to type I interferons (IFNs) is the lack of antiproliferative responses. Foser et al. 2006 have shown that costimulation with IFN-alpa and transforming growth factor beta-1 (TGF-beta) potentiates antiproliferative activity in a sensitive (ME15) and resistant (D10) human melanoma cell line. Gene induction by small concentration of interferon-alpha-2a (100 U/ml) was analyzed in human cancer cell lines with differences in sensitivity to IFN-alpha and TGF-beta. Among other antiproliferative genes we found upregulated IFITM3 gene expression levels and inducibility of this antiproliferative protein in interferon sensitive cell lines. A panel of 10 human cancer cell lines (ME-15, D10, LS174T, AsPC1, A549, MIAPACA, CaLu6, HCT116, PANC1, JUSO) were treated with 100 U/ml IFN-alpha. In addition to 24 hours treatment with (D) or without IFN-alpha (C) as control, gene expression levels of IFN-alpha treated cells at 4 hours (H) were analyzed. mRNA abundance was measured in triplicates using commercial Illumina microarrays.