Developmentally-related candidate retinoic acid target genes regulated early during neuronal differentiation of human embryonal carcinoma

Embryonal carcinoma is a model of embryonic development as well as tumor cell differentiation. In response to all-trans retinoic acid (RA), the human embryonal carcinoma (EC) cell line, NT2/D1, differentiates toward a neuronal lineage with associated loss of cell growth and tumorigenicity. Through the use of cDNA-based microarrays we sought to identify the early downstream targets of RA during differentiation commitment of NT2/D1 cells. A total of 57 genes were induced and 37 genes repressed by RA. RA regulated genes were restricted at 8 h with 27 genes induced and five repressed. The total number of RA-responsive transcripts increased at 24 and 48 h and their pattern of expression was more symmetrical. For a given time point less than 1% of the 9128 cDNAs on the expression array were regulated by RA. Many of these gene products are associated with developmental pathways including those of TGF-beta (Lefty A, NMA, follistatin), homeo domain (HoxD1, Meis2, Meis1, Gbx2), IGF (IGFBP3, IGFBP6, CTGF), Notch (manic fringe, ADAM11), Hedgehog (patched) and Wnt (Frat2, secreted frizzled-related protein 1) signaling. In addition a large cassette of genes induced by RA at 24-48 h are associated with cell adhesion, cytoskeletal and matrix remodeling, growth suppression and intracellular signaling cascades. The majority of repressed genes are associated with protein/RNA processing, turnover or metabolism. The early induced genes identified may play a regulatory role in RA-mediated growth suppression and terminal differentiation and may have physiologic or pharmacologic importance during normal human development and retinoid-based cancer therapy or prevention.