Effects of c-Src Overexpression in CD40-Activated Human B Lymphocytes.

The 60-kDa c-Src is the normal human cellular protein counterpart of the highly transforming v-src gene. Recently, c-Src activity was reported to increase in CD40-activated human B cells in the presence of IL-4, suggesting its involvement in proliferation. We report here that c-Src expression is detectable concomitant with the detection of Stat5b and, therefore, Stat5b may serve as a substrate for tyrosine phosphorylation by c-Src, inducing the activation of Stat5b and initiating a transcriptional pathway important for B cell expansion. To elucidate the exact role of c-Src in the proliferation of normal B cells, we undertook c-Src over-expression experiments. Recombinant adenoviruses Ad5/F35 vectors, which we previously reported as highly efficient for B cell transduction, encoding wild-type c-Src(c-Src/WT), constitutively active c-Src(c-Src/CA), dominant negative c-Src(c-Src/DN) or EYFP were constructed. B lymphocytes purified from human peripheral blood were activated with soluble CD154 in the presence or absence of IL-2, IL-4 and IL-10, and infected with the viruses. Real-time PCR and Western blot analysis revealed that vector-transferred c-Src were strongly expressed in infected B cells as early as 48 hours post infection. Kinase assays confirmed that vector-transferred c-Src/WT and c-Src/CA display a strong kinase activity whereas negligible kinase activity was detected with Ad5/F35-c-Src/DN. No significant variation of B cell expansion could be observed between uninfected cells, Ad/F35-EYFP and Ad5/F35-c-Src/CA or Ad5/F35-c-Src/WT infected cells, suggesting that B cell proliferation induced by endogenous c-Src already attains a maximum rate of expansion, which cannot be further enhanced by supplemental exogenous c-Src. In contrast, overexpression of c-Src/DN results in a 40% inhibition of B cell expansion. These results suggest that transgenic dominant negative c-Src may compete with endogenous c-Src resulting in a partial inhibition of a transcriptional pathway involved in B cell proliferation. In conclusion, our results confirm an important role for c-Src in the expansion of normal human B cells in vitro.