Transgenic Disruption of Gap Junctional Intercellular Communication Enhances Early but Not Late Stage Hepatocarcinogenesis in the Rat

Abstract

Much experimental evidence supports the conclusion that loss of gap junctional intercellular communication (GJIC) contributes to carcinogenesis. Transgenic rats featuring a dominant negative mutant of the connexin 32 gene under albumin promoter control (Cx32ΔTg-High and Cx32ΔTg-Low lines, respectively with high and low copy numbers of the transgene) have disrupted GJIC, as demonstrated by scrape dye-transfer assay in vivo as previous report by Asamoto et al. (2004) . In the present study, we investigated the susceptibility of these transgenic rats to a single intraperitoneal administration of diethylnitrosamine (DEN), and found a significant increase in preneoplastic glutathione S-transferase placental form (GST-P) positive lesions in the livers of Cx32ΔTg-High but not Cx32ΔTg-Low rats. However, incidences of adenomas and hepatocellular carcinomas were not elevated at the end of the experiment (52 weeks). In addition, we investigated the promotional effect of phenobarbital (PB) on Cx32ΔTg-High rats pretreated with DEN and found enhanced formation of GST-P positive lesions, in contrast to the lack of promoting effects reported for Cx32 deficient mice. The results indicate that although both high and low expression of the dominant negative connexin 32 mutant gene in our rats is able to inhibit gap junctional capacity, only high expression is effective at enhancing susceptibility to early stage DEN-induced liver carcinogenesis.