Cancer research
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The endocrine status of 49 premenopausal women taking tamoxifen after completion of adjuvant chemotherapy for breast cancer was determined by radioimmunoassay from serial blood samples. Of these 49 women, 7 had regular menses, 14 had irregular menses, 23 were amenorrheic, and 5 had undergone hysterectomies. A group of 12 premenopausal women who had no history of breast cancer and were not taking tamoxifen served as a control group. ⋯ Minimum and maximum serum follicle-stimulating hormone levels were 1.9 and 9.0 mIU/ml in the 12 normal women and 5.2 and 24.3 mIU in the 13 women with supraphysiological estradiol levels. Our findings demonstrate that the majority of women who continue to menstruate while taking continuous tamoxifen following cytotoxic chemotherapy have supraphysiologic estradiol levels. This is a potential mechanism for failure of tamoxifen therapy in these premenopausal women.
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Leukemia L1210 cell lines, ED1 and ED2, were generated which were resistant to the cytotoxic effects of deoxyadenosine/erythro-9-(2-hydroxyl-3-nonyl)adenine and deoxyadenosine/erythro-9-(2-hydroxyl-3-nonyl)adenine plus 2,3-dihydro-1H-pyrazole[2,3a]imidazole/Desferal, respectively. The ED1 and ED2 were characterized to show that these cell lines had increased levels of ribonucleotide reductase as measured by CDP reduction. The reductase activity in crude cell-free extracts from the ED1 and ED2 cells was not inhibited by dATP. ⋯ The ED1 and ED2 cells were highly cross-resistant, as measured by growth inhibition, to deoxyguanosine/8-aminoguanosine, 2-fluorodeoxyadenosine, and 2-fluoroadenine arabinoside. While the ED2 cells showed resistance to 2,3-dihydro-1H-pyrazole-[2,3a]-imidazole/Desferal (6-fold), the ED1 and ED2 cell lines showed less resistance to hydroxyurea, 4-methyl-5-amino-1-formylisoquinoline thiosemicarbazone, and the dialdehyde of inosine. These data indicate that the mechanisms of resistance to the ribonucleotide reductase inhibitors are related to the increased level of ribonucleotide reductase activity and to the decreased sensitivity of the effector-binding subunit to dATP.