title: [Anticancer agents and apoptosis].
abstract: We reviewed recent investigations on apoptosis related to anticancer chemotherapy. The study of programmed cell death, apoptosis, has become one of the main stream in cellular biology, particularly in immunology, developmental biology and oncology. To determine whether the apoptotic cell death induced by anticancer agents could be inhibited by bcl-2 oncogene, we established a bcl-2 transfected human small cell lung cancer cell line, SBC-3/Bcl-2. SBC-3/Bcl-2 showed higher resistance to ADM, CPT-11 and MMC compared to the parental line SBC-3. Agarose gel electrophoresis showed typical DNA fragmentation of SBC-3 following treatment with CPT-11 or MMC. In contrast, the same concentration of the drugs did not induce DNA fragmentation in SBC-3/Bcl-2. However, there was no difference in sensitivity to CDDP, VP-16, ACNU, MTX and Taxol between SBC-3 and SBC-3/Bcl-2 (Ohmori T, et al: Biochem Biophys Res Commun 1993). These results suggest that bcl-2 can modulate the cytotoxicity of some anticancer agents by inhibiting the process of apoptosis. We speculate that some apoptotic pathways are bcl-2-dependent and others bcl-2-independent.
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Fukuoka
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Saijo
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D000970:Antineoplastic Agents; D017209:Apoptosis; D006801:Humans; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000473:pathology*; D011518:Proto-Oncogene Proteins
chemical_list: D000970:Antineoplastic Agents; D011518:Proto-Oncogene Proteins