Effects of extracellular calcium on insulin‐like growth factor II in human bone cells

Extracellular calcium concentration is critically important for normal function of the body. Recently, reports have shown that cells derived from parathyroid glands contain an extracellular calcium receptor that is responsive to changes in extracellular calcium. Bone is also intimately involved in calcium homeostasis; therefore, we sought to test the hypothesis that extracellular calcium has direct effects on bone cells. Extracellular calcium was increased by the addition of varying concentrations of CaCl₂ (0.4–2.0 mM) to the control medium. An increase in extracellular calcium increased cell proliferation, as assessed by ³H‐thymidine incorporation, in a number of cell types including normal human bone cells derived from vertebrae (HBV155) and a number of human osteosarcoma cell lines. The increase in cell proliferation by elevated CaCl₂ was dose dependent, whereas MgCl₂ was not effective at the doses tested (up to 2 mM added MgCl₂). To test the hypothesis that the mitogenic activity of elevated extracellular calcium involved a growth factor, levels of insulin‐like growth factor II (IGF‐II) were measured in the conditioned medium of HBV155 cells by radioimmunoassay after removal of binding proteins by size exclusion chromatography. The effects of an increase in extracellular calcium by 1 mM were: 1) increased culture media levels of IGF‐II within 1 h of treatment, 2) the increase in IGF‐II levels reached a maximum after 8 h of treatment, and 3) IGF‐II levels were still elevated after 24 h of treatment. Furthermore, a blocking monoclonal antibody against IGF‐II abolished the increased cell proliferation in HBV155 cells following elevation of extracellular calcium. Taken together, these findings suggest that an increase in extracellular calcium results in an increase in IGF‐II which is required for the subsequent increase in cell proliferation.