Colon Cancer Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Colon Cancer, including details on causes, treatment, symptoms.

Differential sensitivity of human colon cancer cell lines to the nucleoside analogs ARC and DRB.

Bhat UG, Gartel AL

Department of Medicine, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL 60612, USA.

Recently, we identified a nucleoside analog named ARC (4-amino-6-hydrazino-7-beta-D-ribofuranosyl-7H-Pyrrolo[2,3-d]pyrimidine-5-carboxamide), which has the properties of a general transcriptional inhibitor. Here, we report the characterization of ARC on a panel of colorectal cancer (CRC) cell lines. Cell death induced by ARC in CRC cells was accompanied by caspase-3 cleavage and correlated with the downregulation of antiapoptotic proteins, survivin and Mcl-1 and with the inhibition of Akt phosphorylation. At the same time, colon cancer cell lines were resistant to the well-known nucleoside analog DRB (5,6-dichloro-1-beta-D-ribofuranosylbenzimidazole), which failed to downregulate Mcl-1 or survivin. Overall, ARC could represent an attractive candidate for anti-cancer drug development that targets multiple survival pathways in colon cancer cells.

Published 29 January 2008 in Int J Cancer, 122(6): 1426-9.
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