Hepatocyte growth factor effects on motility of stone-diseased and stone-free human gallbladders

Hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) has unique morphogenic activity for several cell types. Besides its major effect upon liver regeneration, its motogenic activity to enhance motility has not been verified for smooth muscles. The refore we evaluated the impact of HGF in an in-vitro model of human gallbla dder motility. Twelve stone-diseased and eight stone-free muscle strips wer e preincubated with HGF (100 ng/ml, 200 ng/ml). For the analysis of motilit y, cholecystokinin (CCK) was added (0.1 nM, 0.5 nM, 2 nM, 10 nM, and 100 nM ). Twelve stone-diseased and eight stone-free strips without HGF incubation served as the control group. The tone of healthy (tone/100 nM CCK: control group, 12.4 +/- 3.6 mN; HGF group, 19.5 +/- 4.5 mN) and stone-diseased (to ne/100 nM CCK: control group, 10.8 +/- 3.8 mN; HGF group, 17.3 +/- 4.8 mN) muscle strips, preincubated with HGF, was increased, with a higher sensitiv ity to CCK. Our results suggest that there is a clear motogenic response of stone-diseased human gallbladders to HGF.