The effects of s analgus RC-160and SMS-201-995 on tyrosine phosphatase and cell proliferation were investigated in COS-7 and NIH 3T3 cells expressing human somatostatin receptor subtype 1 or 2 (SSTR1 or SSTR2 antagonize the mitogenic effect of growth factors acting on tyrosine kinase receptors such as epidermal growth factor (EGF) and basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) (9-11). Furthermore, these analogues have been found to stimulate tyrosine phosphatase activity in normal and tumoral pancreatic cells (9,(12)(13)(14)(15) and to activate the dephosphorylation of EGF receptor (9, 16). The ability of somatostatin analogues to stimulate tyrosine phosphatase correlates with their inhibitory effect on pancreatic cell growth, and this correlation supports the hypothesis that the growth inhibition is mediated by dephosphorylation of tyrosine protein signals. Somatostatin analogues might suppress tumor growth by reversing the stimulatory effect of EGF on phosphorylation of EGF receptor tyrosine kinase and EGF-phosphorylated proteins (17). We also observed that a membrane tyrosine phosphatase is coeluted with somatostatin receptor, suggesting that tyrosine phosphatase may be a part ofthe signal transduction pathway promoted by somatostatin receptor occupancy (16).The somatostatin receptor subtypes and the molecular mechanism involved in the tyrosine phosphatase stimulation have been, until now, unknown (18, 19). We must better understand what physiological response every subtype elicits, how their signals are processed in the cell, and in what normal and/or pathological tissues each is expressed to choose the appropriate analogue for targeting to specific cells for therapeutic use.In the present study, we examined the effects of two somatostatin analogues, RC-160 and SMS, on binding and signal transduction pathways of the two human cloned somatostatin receptor subtypes hSSTR1 and hSSTR2 transiently expressed in COS-7 cells. We also investigated the
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