Exogenous growth hormone promotes an epithelial-mesenchymal hybrid phenotype in cancerous HeLa cells but not in non-cancerous HEK293 cells

In cancer, the Epithelial to Mesenchymal Transition (EMT) is the process in which epithelial cells acquire mesenchymal features that allow metastasis, and chemotherapy resistance. Growth hormone (GH) has been associated with melanoma, breast, and endometrial cancer progression through an autocrine regulation of EMT. Since exogenous and autocrine expression of GH is known to have different molecular effects, we investigated whether exogenous GH is capable of regulating the EMT of cancer cells. Furthermore, we investigated whether exogenous GH could promote EMT in non-cancerous cells. To study the effect of GH (100 ng/ml) on cancer and non-cancer cells, we used HeLa and HEK293 cell lines, respectively. We evaluated the loss of cell–cell contacts, by cell scattering assay and migration by wound-healing assay. Additionally, we evaluated the morphological changes by phalloidin-staining. Finally, we evaluated the molecular markers E-cadherin and vimentin by flow cytometry. GH enhances cell scattering and the migratory rate and promotes morphological changes such as cell area increase and actin cytoskeleton filaments formation on HeLa cell line. Moreover, we found that GH favors the expression of the mesenchymal protein vimentin, followed by an increase in E-cadherin's epithelial protein expression, characteristics of an epithelial-mesenchymal hybrid phenotype that is associated with metastasis. On HEK293cells, GH promotes morphological changes, including cell area increment and filopodia formation, but not affects scattering, migration, nor EMT markers expression. Our results suggest that exogenous GH might participate in cervical cancer progression favoring a hybrid EMT phenotype but not on non-cancerous HEK293 cells.