Intracellular glutathione (GSH) has been shown to be one of the major factors modulating tumor response to a variety of commonly used anti-neoplastic agents. In this study the GSH contents of human ovarian tumors from primary biopsies, nude mouse xenografts, and in vitro cell cultures were compared. Pronounced intratumor cell-to-cell heterogeneity in GSH content was observed in primary patient ...

Previous studies from our laboratories revealed a reduced rate of whole-blood (WB) glutathione (GSH) synthesis in severely burned patients. To determine whether WB GSH metabolism is an indicator of the status of GSH metabolism in one or more of the major organs, we used a burn rabbit model to determine GSH concentrations and rates of synthesis in WB, liver, lungs, kidney, and skeletal muscle. L...

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) progressively depletes GSH content in humans. Although the accumulated evidence suggests a role of decreased GSH in the pathogenesis of HIV, significant controversy remains concerning the mechanism of GSH depletion, especially in regard to envisioning appropriate therapeutic strategies to help compensate for such decreased antioxidant capacity. Tat, a transact...

The present study examined how the multidrug resistance protein (MRP) 2, which is an ATP-dependent anionic conjugate transporter, also mediates transport of the chemotherapeutic cationic drug vinblastine (VBL). We show that ATP-dependent [(3)H]VBL (0.2 microM) uptake into membrane vesicles from Sf9 cells infected with a baculovirus encoding rabbit Mrp2 (Sf9-Mrp2) was similar to vesicles from mo...

Isolated hepatocytes incubated with [35S]-methionine were examined for the time-dependent accumulation of [35S]-glutathione (GSH) in cytosol and mitochondria, the latter confirmed by density gradient purification. In GSH-depleted and -repleted hepatocytes, the increase of specific activity of mitochondrial GSH lagged behind cytosol, reaching nearly the same specific activity by 1-2 h. However, ...

Production of pyocyanin enhances Pseudomonas aeruginosa virulence. Many of pyocyanin's in vitro and in vivo cytotoxic effects on human cells appear to result from its ability to redox cycle. Pyocyanin directly accepts electrons from NADH or NADPH with subsequent electron transfer to oxygen, generating reactive oxygen species. Reduced glutathione (GSH) is an important cellular antioxidant, and i...

In this study we used HeLa cells transfected with a conditional Bcl-2 expression construct to study the effects of Bcl-2 on reduced glutathione (GSH) metabolism. Our previous work demonstrated that depletion of GSH by culturing cells in tissue culture medium lacking the amino acids cysteine and methionine, essential for GSH biosynthesis, caused cells overexpressing Bcl-2 to become sensitized to...

Glutathione (GSH) plays a fundamental role in plant defense-signaling network. Recently, we have established the involvement of GSH with ethylene (ET) to combat environmental stress. However, the mechanism of GSH-ET interplay still remains unexplored. Here, we demonstrate that GSH induces ET biosynthesis by modulating the transcriptional and posttranscriptional regulations of its key enzymes, 1...