BACKGROUND Patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia are often treated with 6-mercaptopurine, and those with homozygous deficiency in thiopurine S-methyltransferase (TPMT) enzyme activity have an extreme sensitivity to this drug as a result of the accumulation of higher cellular concentrations of thioguanine nucleotides. We studied the metabolism, dose requirements, and tolerance of 6-mercapto...

BACKGROUND Thiopurines are the prerequisite for immunomodulation in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) therapy. When administered in high (oncological) dose, thiopurine metabolites act as purine antagonists, causing DNA-strand breakage and myelotoxicity. In lower IBD dosages, the mode of action is primarily restricted to anti-inflammatory effects. Then, myelosuppression and hepatotoxicity are the...

Cell culture studies have been performed to compare the mutagenic potential and the induction of sister chromatid exchanges for hematoporphyrin derivative photoradiation, ionizing radiation, and UV radiation. The mutation frequency in Chinese hamster ovary cells at the hypoxanthine-guanine phosphoribosyltransferase locus was measured using resistance to 6-thioguanine. Phenotypic expression time...

A selective method was devised for the isolation of "revertants" from polyoma-transformed sublines derived from BHK21/13 Syrian hamster fibroblasts. A hybrid, polyploid subline was obtained by growing together, in mixed culture in the presence of aminopterin, two variant BHK21/13 sublines lacking either inosinic acid pyrophosphorylase or thymidine kinase. Whereas these variant sublines were res...

The effect of the adenosine diphosphoribosyltransferase inhibitors, the substituted benzamides, on the cytotoxicity of 6-thioguanine (6TG) was investigated. Nontoxic concentrations of benzamides potentiated the cytotoxicity of 6TG with a dose enhancement factor of 2, producing a 6-fold increase in cell killing at 10% survival. 6TG treatment did not deplete cellular NAD levels, and in the presen...

We have examined contact-mediated intercellular communication by measuring the transfer of thioguanine sensitivity to a hypoxanthine phosphoribosyltransferase (EC 2.4.2.8)-negative clone (66cl-4) selected from one subline isolated previously from a spontaneously arising mammary tumor of a BALB/cfC3H mouse. We tested other sublines from the same tumor and unrelated cell types for their ability t...