The somatostatin receptor SSTR1 is coupled to phosphotyrosine phosphatase activity in CHO-K1 cells

Somatostatin receptors are abundantly expressed on a variety of human endocrine and epithelial tumors. The ability of these receptors to couple to effector pathways that inhibit the growth of these tumor cells has prompted the use of somatostatin agonists in the treatment of human neoplasms. It has been demonstrated that somatostatin stimulates a phosphotyrosine phosphatase in human tumor cells through a receptor-mediated process. This stimulation may counteract the growth-promoting properties of growth factors and the receptor tyrosine kinases that they activate. The recent cloning and characterization of distinct somatostatin receptor subtypes raise the possibility that different receptor subtypes mediate distinct effector pathways. To determine whether cloned somatostatin receptors could mediate coupling to phosphotyrosine phosphatase activity, we examined phosphatase activity after somatotostatin activation of the rat somatostatin receptors SSTR1 and SSTR2 after their stable expression in heterologous Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO-K1) cells. We found that stimulation of SSTR1 cells was capable of increasing phosphotyrosine phosphatase activity, despite the coupling of both receptors to the inhibition of adenylyl cyclase in these cells. This activation was characterized by an EC₅₀ of 70 nM and was sensitive to pertussis toxin. In addition, we demonstrate that activation of phosphotyrosine phosphatase activity in pituitary cell lines correlates with the endogenous expression of the SSTR1 gene within these cells.