Several investigations have suggested a putative tumor suppressor role for lysyl oxidase because it is downregulated in many human and oncogene-induced tumors. To address this issue we down-regulated the enzyme in normal rat kidney fibroblasts by stable transfection of its cDNA in an antisense orientation. The selected clones revealed an absence of lysyl oxidase and dramatic phenotypic changes, interpretable as signs of transformation. The antisense lysyl oxidase clones showed, indeed, loose attachment to the plate and anchorage-independent growth and were highly tumorigenic in nude mice. Moreover, we found an impaired response of the PDGF and IGF-1 receptors to their ligands. In particular, the transformed cells showed a down-regulation of both PDGF receptors and expressed the 105-kDa isoform of the IGF-1 receptor, which was not present in the normal control cells. The lack of response to PDGF-BB has been described as a feature of many ras-transformed phenotypes. Therefore, we looked at the status of the p21 ras . Indeed, we found a significantly higher level of active p21 ras both during steady-state growth and prolonged starvation. Our data reveal new evidence for a tumor suppressor activity of lysyl oxidase, highlighting its particular role in controlling Ras activation and growth factor dependence.
Lysyl oxidase (LOX)1 (protein-6-oxidase; EC 1.4.3.13) is the key enzyme that controls collagen and elastin maturation (1, 2). Indeed, it catalyzes the oxidative deamination of peptidyl lysine and hydroxylysine to peptidyl-␣-aminoadipic-␦-semialdehyde into elastin and collagen chains. The consequent aldehydes lead to a spontaneous condensation forming inter-and intrachain cross-links. This post-translational modification of extracellular matrix molecules seems to have a very important role both for collagen and elastin structural aspects and for triggering still unknown signal transduction pathways. Several reports have suggested a clear association between organ fibrosis and increased LOX activity (3-9).The most intriguing aspect regarding LOX activity refers to its putative cell phenotype control and/or tumor suppressor activity. In many naturally occurring and oncogene-induced tumors, LOX is down-regulated, while, in contrast, LOX is one of the main genes induced in concomitance with the reversion process (10 -14). In particular it seems that LOX was downregulated in cells transformed by ras or ras-dependent oncogenes, so that it was first identified as a "ras recision gene" (rrg) (10,11,13). In particular, Friedman and co-workers (10, 11) showed that H-ras-transfected NIH-3T3, induced to revert by interferon /␥, would return to their transformed phenotype upon transfection with an antisense LOX vector. The reversion or the re-transformation did not affect the level of p21 ras although other possible mechanisms or parameters were not studied (10).The localization of the enzyme is mainly extracellular, although recently it has been confirmed that processed LOX is localized intracellularly and inside the nucleu...