Effects of aquaporins on chemosensitivity to cisplatin in ovarian cancer cells.

INTRODUCTION: As water transporters, aquaporins (AQPs) are closely related to other membrane transporters, and water permeability in cell may contribute to chemosensitivity of tumor. To understand the correlation between AQPs and cisplatin (DDP) sensitivity to ovarian cancer cells, effects of DDP on AQPs expression were detected in vitro, and chemosensitivity of DDP was observed in hypertoncity in vitro. METHODS: SKOV3 cells were incubated with DDP, aquaporins blocker mercuric chloride, or in hypertonicity, and cell proliferation inbihition was measured by MTT. Effects of DDP on AQPs mRNA expression cancer cell SKOV3 were measured by RT-PCR. RESULTS: MTT analyses showed that aquaporin blocker and hypertonicity increased the sensitivity of SKOV3 to DDP. The effects of DDP on AQPs expression were different between aquaporin subtypes: following an increase in the incubation time, the expression of AQP1 mRNA decreased significantly, but expression of AQP3 and AQP8 increased. CONCLUSION: Our studies have showed that different subtypes of AQPs play different roles in ovarian cancer cell in vitro, and which suggested that AQPs might be associated with chemotherapy sensitivity of ovarian cancer.