Up-regulation of insulin-like growth factor binding protein-5 is independent of muscle cell differentiation, sensitive to rapamycin, but insensitive to wortmannin and LY294002

Skeletal myoblast differentiation is stimulated by insulin-like growth factors (IGFs). The autocrine action of IGFs is mediated through the type-1 IGF receptor (IGFR-1) and modulated by IGF binding proteins (IGFBPs) secreted by the cells. The mouse C2 myoblast cell line stably transfected with a vector producing IGF-II antisense RNA was used to show that specific IGFBP expression changes with the state of the cells: high levels of IGFBP-2 messenger RNA (mRNA) were found only in proliferating myoblasts, whereas IGFBP-3 mRNA was induced in quiescent cells. Secretion of IGFBP5 was strongly stimulated during differentiation. Insulin and IGF dose-response experiments showed that up-regulation of IGFBP-5 resulted from IGFR-1 activation. Drugs interfering with IGFR-1 signaling and inhibiting myoblast differentiation had different effects on IGFBP-5 up-regulation. Two phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI 3-kinase) inhibitors, wortmaninn and LY294002 2-(4-morpholinyl)-8-phenyl-4H-1-benzopyran-4-one], failed to alter IGFBP-5 up-regulation, which persisted in the absence of differentiation. Rapamycin which indirectly prevents activation of the p70 ribosomal protein-S6 kinase (p70S6k), suppressed IGFBP-5 induction. Because the PI3-kinase inhibitors block p70S6k, neither kinase would be required for IGFR-1-dependent IGFBP-5 induction. In C2 anti-IGF-II myoblasts, IGFBP-5 induction is therefore rapamycin-sensitive and independent of differentiation.