• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Applied Pharmacology
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• 1994.11a
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• pp.147-172
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• 1994

Aziridinylbenzoquinones such as 3, 6-diaziridinyl-1, 4-benzoquinone (DZQ) and its 2, 5-methyl analog (MeDZQ) require bioreductive activation in order to elicit their anticancer activities. To determine the involvement of DTD in the activation of these drugs, we have used a ligation-mediated polymerase chain reaction to map the intracellular alkylation sites in a sing1e copy gene at the nucleotide level. We have performed this analysis in two human colon carcinoma cells, one proficient (HT-29) and one deficient (BE) in DT-diaphorase (DTD) activity. In the DTD proficient HT-29 cell line, DZQ and MeDZQ were found to alkylate both 5'-(A/T)G(C)-3' and 5'-(A/T)A-3' sequences. This is consistent with the nucleotide preferences observed when DZQ and MeDZQ are activated by purified DTD to reactive metabolites capable of alkylating DNA in vitro [Lee, C. -S., Hartley, J. A., Berardini, M. D., Butler, J., Siegel., D., Ross, D., & Gibson, N. W. (1992) Biochemistry, 31: 3019-3025]. Surprisingly in the DTD-deficient BE cell line a pattern of alkylation induced by DZQ and MeDZQ similar to that observed in the DTD-proficient HT-29 cells was observed. This suggests that reductive enzymes other than DTD can be involved in activating DZQ and MeDZQ to DNA reactive species in vivo.