Adenoviral vectors encoding tumor necrosis factor-alpha and FasL induce apoptosis of normal and tumoral anterior pituitary cells

Our previous work showed that tumor necrosis factor (TNF)- and FasL induce apoptosis of anterior pituitary cells. To further analyze the effect of these proapoptotic factors, we infected primary cultures from rat anterior pituitary, GH3 and AtT20 cells with first-generation adenoviral vectors encoding TNF-, FasL or, as a control, -galactosidase (-Gal), under the control of the human cytomegalovirus promoter. Successful expression of the encoded transgenes was determined by immuno-cytochemistry. Although we observed basal expression of TNF- and FasL in control cultures of anterior pituitary cells, fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) cell cycle analysis showed that the overexpression of TNF- or FasL increases the percentage of hypodiploid lactotropes an