Description
Insulin analogues are designed to improve the pharmacokinetic parameters compared to regular human insulin. This provides a sustained control of blood glucose levels in diabetic patients. All novel insulin analogues are tested for their mitogenic side effects, however these assays do not take into account the molecular mode-of-action of different insulin analogues. Insulin analogues can bind the insulin receptor (INSR) and the insulin-like growth factor-1 receptor (IGF1R) with different affinities and consequently will activate different downstream signaling pathways. Here we used a panel of MCF7 human breast cancer cell lines that selectively express either one of the isoforms of the INSR (IRA or IRB) or the IGF1R. We sought to study the role of the different receptors (IRA, IRB and IGF1R) in the mitogenic signaling of insulin-like molecules (including insulin, glargine, X10 (or AspB10) and IGF1).