Journal
BRITISH JOURNAL OF CANCER
Volume 84, Issue 9, Pages 1272-1279Publisher
CHURCHILL LIVINGSTONE
DOI: 10.1054/bjoc.2001.1786
Keywords
bleomycin; deglyco-bleomycin-A(2); apoptosis; mitotic cell death; electroporation; electrochemotherapy
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Bleomycin is a cytotoxic antibiotic that generates DNA double-strand breaks (DSB) and DNA single-strand breaks (SSB). It is possible to introduce known quantities of bleomycin molecules into cells. Low amounts kill the cells by a slow process termed mitotic cell death, while high amounts produce a fast process that has been termed pseudoapoptosis. We previously showed that these types of cell death are a direct consequence of the DSB generated by bleomycin. Here, we use deglyco-bleomycin, a bleomycin derivative lacking the carbohydrate moiety. Although this molecule performs the same nucleophilic attacks on DNA as bleomycin, we show that deglyco-bleomycin is at least 100 times less toxic to Chinese hamster fibroblasts than bleomycin. In fact, deglyco-bleomycin treatment results in apoptosis induction. In contrast, however, deglyco-bleomycin was found to generate almost exclusively SSB. Our results suggest that more than 150 000 SSB per cell are required to trigger apoptosis in Chinese hamster fibroblasts and that SSB are 300 times less toxic than DSB. Taken together with previous studies on bleomycin, our data demonstrates that cells can die by apoptosis, mitotic cell death, or pseudoapoptosis, depending on the number of DNA breaks and on the ratio of SSB to DSB. (C) 2001 Cancer Research Campaign.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available