HO-1 modulates the expression of genes involved in inflammation, angiogenesis, proliferation, apoptosis and cell adhesion in human lung cancer cells

The enzymatic activity of HO-1 results in decreased oxidative stress, attenuated inflammatory response, and very often in a lower rate of apoptosis. This is due to removal of heme, a potent prooxidant and proinflammatory agent, but mainly because of generation of biologically active products such as CO and bilirubin. In order to find the correlation between the HO-1 level and the expression of different genes of interest we have utilized human lung cancer cell line NCI-H292 stably overexpressing HO-1. Additionally we have checked if HO-1 can modulate genes expression in NCI-H292 cells treated with TNF. The effect of HO-1 overexpression on transcriptome was assessed by microarray analysis. We have observed that the increase in HO-1 level may affect the expression of different genes involved in cytokine synthesis, angiogenesis, apoptosis, proliferation and cell adhesion. Additionally, HO-1 may interact with the TNF treatment and influence the expression of some genes like IL-1, IL-6, IL-8, FAS and NF-kB. NCI-H292 cells, control (pcDNA) and stably overexpressig HO-1 (pcHO1) were treated for 24 h with TNF (30 ng/ul), then the cells were lysed and RNA was collected. The whole human gene expression profile was assessed with Agilent microarray analysis. Three independent experiments were performed at each time using different batch of cells.