The von Hippel-Lindau gene product inhibits vascular permeability factor/vascular endothelial growth factor expression in renal cell carcinoma by blocking protein kinase C pathways

Soumitro Pal, Kevin P. Claffey, Harold F. Dvorak, Debabrata Mukhopadhyay

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

132 Scopus citations

Abstract

Mutation or loss of function of the yon Hippel-Lindau (VHL) tumor suppressor gene is regularly found in sporadic renal cell carcinomas (RCC), well vascularized malignant tumors that characteristically overexpress vascular permeability factor/vascular endothelial growth factor (VPF/VEGF). The wild-type VHL (wt-VHL) gene product acts to suppress VPF/VEGF expression, which is overexpressed when wt-VHL is inactive. The present study investigated the pathways by which VHL regulates VPF/VEGF expression. We found that inhibition of protein kinase C (PKC) represses VPF/VEGF expression in RCC cells that regularly overexpress VPF/VEGF. The wt-VHL expressed by stably transfected RCC cells forms cytoplasmic complexes with two specific PKC isoforms, ζ and δ, and prevents their translocation to the cell membrane where they otherwise would engage in signaling steps that lead to VPF/VEGF overexpression. Other experiments implicated mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) phosphorylation as a downstream step in PKC regulation of VPF/VEGF expression. Taken together, these data demonstrate that wt-VHL, by neutralizing PKC isoforms ζ and δ and thereby inhibiting MAPK activation, plays an important role in preventing aberrant VPF/VEGF overexpression and the angiogenesis that results from such overexpression.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)27509-27512
Number of pages4
JournalJournal of Biological Chemistry
Volume272
Issue number44
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 31 1997

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Biochemistry
  • Molecular Biology
  • Cell Biology

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