Granulocytic maturation of HL-60 promyelocytic
leukemia cells induced by
dimethylsulfoxide has been shown to produce a decrease in cellular
protein phosphotyrosine residues and increases in both
tyrosine kinase and
protein phosphotyrosine phosphatase activities (D. A. Frank and A. C. Sartorelli, Biochem. Biophys. Res. Commun., 140: 440-447, 1986). These changes have been shown to not be restricted to
dimethylsulfoxide-induced differentiation, since similar changes occur in HL-60 cells initiated with
retinoic acid and in HL-60 sublines resistant to
dimethylsulfoxide-induced differentiation treated with the
retinoid. These regulatory events are not directly coupled to growth arrest, which accompanies terminal maturation, since the
anthracycline antibiotics aclacinomycin A and
marcellomycin, which induce HL-60 differentiation, cause these changes in
phosphotyrosine metabolism, while
Adriamycin, at a level which produces an equivalent degree of growth inhibition but does not initiate the maturation of HL-60 cells, does not. Furthermore, an HL-60 subline deficient in
hypoxanthine-guanine phosphoribosyltransferase, which differentiates in the presence of
6-thioguanine, produced a decrease in
phosphotyrosine residues and increases in
tyrosine kinase and
phosphotyrosine phosphatase activities in response to the
purine antimetabolite, while the parental HL-60 line, in which
6-thioguanine inhibits cellular proliferation but does not induce maturation, does not exhibit these changes. Finally, similar alterations in
phosphotyrosine regulation were exhibited during
anthracycline-induced differentiation of the murine myelomonocytic
leukemia cell line WEHI-3B D+, supporting the concept that the phenomena measured represent a general response to inducers of the granulocytic differentiation of
leukemia cells.