Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UNIPROT:P01178 (oxytocin)
 15,767 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Oxytocin (OT) receptors (OTRs) have been demonstrated in a number of human breast tumors and tumor cells, but it was not clear whether the receptors were functional. We examined the regulation and function of OTR in a tumor cell line, Hs578T, derived from human breast. These cells expressed moderate levels of OTR when cultured in 10% FBS, as demonstrated by RT-PCR and binding analyses. Serum deprivation resulted in the loss of OTRs, with no effect on cell viability. Restoration of serum and addition of 1 microM dexamethasone (DEX) increased OTR levels by about 9-fold. Up-regulation was blocked by the addition of phospholipase C and PKC inhibitors. Serum/DEX treatment also increased steady state OTR messenger RNA levels. OT increased intracellular Ca2+ in a time- and dose-responsive manner, and the effects of OT were lost when OTRs were down-regulated by serum starvation. Serum/DEX up-regulation of OTR restored the responsiveness to OT. OT also stimulated ERK-2 (extracellular signal-regulated protein kinase) phosphorylation and PGE2 synthesis in Hs578T cells. In addition to showing that OTRs in the breast tumor cells are functional, these studies show that Hs578T cells can be used to study molecular regulation of OTR gene expression and intracellular signaling pathways stimulated by OT.
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PMID:Demonstration of functional oxytocin receptors in human breast Hs578T cells and their up-regulation through a protein kinase C-dependent pathway. 1021 79

The optimal medium for cardiac differentiation of adult primitive cells remains to be established. We quantitatively compared the efficacy of IGF-1, dynorphin B, insulin, oxytocin, bFGF, and TGF-beta1 in inducing cardiomyogenic differentiation. Adult mouse skeletal muscle-derived Sca1+/CD45-/c-kit-/Thy-1+ (SM+) and Sca1-/CD45-/c-kit-/Thy-1+ (SM-) cells were cultured in basic medium (BM; DMEM, FBS, IGF-1, dynorphin B) alone and BM supplemented with insulin, oxytocin, bFGF, or TGF-beta1. Cardiac differentiation was evaluated by the expression of cardiac-specific markers at the mRNA (qRT-PCR) and protein (immunocytochemistry) levels. BM+TGF-beta1 upregulated mRNA expression of Nkx2.5 and GATA-4 after 4 days and Myl2 after 9 days. After 30 days, BM+TGF-beta1 induced the greatest extent of cardiac differentiation (by morphology and expression of cardiac markers) in SM- cells. We conclude that TGF-beta1 enhances cardiomyogenic differentiation in skeletal muscle-derived adult primitive cells. This strategy may be utilized to induce cardiac differentiation as well as to examine the cardiomyogenic potential of adult tissue-derived stem/progenitor cells.
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PMID:TGF-beta1 enhances cardiomyogenic differentiation of skeletal muscle-derived adult primitive cells. 1850 Apr 84