Analysis of RNA indicated 20- to 50-fold higher levels of NQO1 gene expression in the liver tumors and in the tissue surrounding the tumors of patients with hepatocarcinoma than in normal individuals.
These results support the ideas that reductive activation of MMC by DTD may be important in the cytotoxicity of MMC and that polymerase chain reaction may be a useful technique for quantitating the relative expression of genes in human tumors.
NAD(P)H:quinone oxidoreductase1 (DT-diaphorase or NQO1) is a flavoprotein that promotes obligatory two-electron reduction of quinones, preventing their participation in redox cycling, oxidative stress, and neoplasia.NQO1 is ubiquitously expressed.
It has been proposed that low molecular weight substance(s) can diffuse from tumor cells into surrounding normal cells and activate the expression of the NQO1 gene.
We measured expression levels of three different reductase enzymes-DT-diaphorase [NAD(P)H (i.e., reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, with or without phosphate): quinone oxidoreductase]; NADPH:cytochrome P-450 reductase; and NADH (i.e., reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide): cytochrome-b5 reductase- in 69 cell lines (most of the National Cancer Institute [NCI] human tumor cell panel) to see if relationships could be established between the activities of these enzymes and cellular sensitivities to the bioreductive compounds mitomycin C and EO9.
Protection from tumor formation is associated with elevation of Phase II enzymes, including glutathione (GSH) transferase and NAD(P)H:quinone oxidoreductase (DT-diaphorase) in experimental carcinogenesis models in vivo.
Tumor sensitivity to MMC, as indicated by the inverse of IC(50) values, was positively correlated with the expression of DTD (r(2), 0.28; P < 0.05) and P450R (r(2), 0.26; P < 0.05).
In the case of MMC, however, the work presented here demonstrates that genotyping of individuals with respect to NQO1 is unlikely to be beneficial in terms of predicting tumor responses to MMC.
These data indicate that the NQO1 609C>T polymorphism results in significantly reduced tumorNQO1 activity and reduced survival in subsets of patients receiving intraperitoneal hyperthermic mitomycin C therapy.
Xenografts established from the clonal lines exhibited significant tumor control following MMC treatment (treated/control [T/C] 17% and 51% for DTD and P450R xenografts, respectively) that was not seen in wild-type tumors (T/C 102%).
A broad spectrum of NQO1 protein expression existed in tumours genotyped as NQO1*1 and NQO1*1/*2 although tumours with NQO1*1 typically expressed higher NQO1 protein.
We show elevated NAD(P)H:quinone oxidoreductase-1 (NQO1) levels in tumors from NSCLC patients. beta-Lapachone, an effective chemotherapeutic and radiosensitizing agent, selectively killed NSCLC cells that expressed high levels of NQO1.