Genotoxicity of Taxol and 10-Deacetyl Baccatin III Using Single Cell Gel Electrophoresis (Comet Assay) in Chinese Hamster Lung Fibroblast

Taxol is used as cancer therapeutic agent. It has been known as weak posotive of chromosome aberration assay in vitro in our previous results (Ryu et al., 1996) and potent clastogens in the mouse bone marrow micronucleus (Tinwell and Ashby, 1994). We performed microgel electrophoresis to determine the effect of taxol and it's precursor 10-deacetyl baccatin III(DAB) on DNA. Microgel electrophoresis is useful, rapid, simple, visual, and sensitive technique for measuring DNA breakage and repair mechanisms in mammalian 근ells. The range of concentration used for taxol were 854, 427, 213.5, 106.8, 53.4 Ug/ml, for DAB 910 ,455, 227.5 U9/ml, Cell viability always exceed 85%. We analyzed the results by using the special software of image analyzer for this comet assay (Komet 3.0). By using this image analyzer software , we can get the result as the tail moment ((mean of tail length - mean of head lengh) x tail%DNA/100). A slight increase in DNA migration was observed for taxol at the concentration of 854 Ug/m4 in the absence of S9 mixture. No increased DNA migration was observed after treatment with DAB.