Gastrin and pentagastrin enhance the tumour proliferation of human stable cultured gastric adenocarcinoma cells.

The effect of gastrin on stimulating tumour proliferation has been evaluated on human pancreas cancer cells in culture and in tumours transplanted to nude mice. The presence of CCK-B/gastrin-like receptor responsible for that effect of gastrin has been proved in colonic (WiDr, HT-29, YAMC) and pancreatic (PANC-1, BON) cell lines. The aim of our study was to examine the stimulating effect of gastrin and pentagastrin on the growth of human gastric adenocarcinoma cell line. The human gastric adenocarcinoma cell line (AGS, CRL-1739) was purchased from ATCC (Rockville, MA, USA). Gastrin-17 was purchased from Sigma-Aldrich (Budapest, Hungary), pentagastrin was from Zeneca Limited (Macclasfield, UK). The cells were incubated in DMEM containing 10% FCS on 96-well culturing plate with 10(4) cells/well starting cell number at 37 degrees C with 5% CO2. The proliferation rates were detected: by the measurements of the metabolically active cells with Owen's reagent and the determination of protein content, and by cell counting in a haemocytometer at several incubation times. As a result, we detected similar proliferation rates using gastrin-17 or pentagastrin in the incubation medium. The stimulating effect of gastrin/pentagastrin on cell line proliferation was in correlation with its concentration. Our results proved that pentagastrin is a 10 times less effective stimulator of proliferation of gastric cancer than gastrin-17, and that AGS human adenocarcinoma cell line might be CCK receptor positive.