Neoplastic transformation is characterized by metabolic rewiring to sustain the elevated biosynthetic demands of highly proliferative cancer cells. To obtain the precursors for macromolecule biosynthesis, cancer cells avidly uptake and metabolize glucose and glutamine. Thus, targeting the availability or metabolism of these nutrients is an attractive anticancer therapeutic strategy. To improve our knowledge concerning how cancer cells respond to nutrient withdrawal, the response to glutamine and/or glucose starvation was studied in human in vitro transformed fibroblasts, deeply characterized at the cellular and molecular level. Concomitant starvation of both nutrients led to rapid loss of cellular adhesion (~16 h after starvation), followed by cell death. Deprivation of glucose alone had the same effect, although at a later time (~48 h after starvation), suggesting that glucose plays a key role in enabling cell attachment to the extracellular matrix. Glutamine deprivation did not induce rapid cell death, but caused a prolonged arrest of cellular proliferation; the cells started dying only 96 h after starvation. Before massive cell death occurred, the effects of all the starvation conditions were reversible. Autophagy activation was observed in cells incubated in the absence of glucose for more than 48 h, while autophagy was not detected under the other starvation conditions. Markers of apoptotic cell death, such as caspase 3, caspase 9 and poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase 1 (PARP-1) proteolytic fragments, were not observed under any growth condition. Glucose and/or glutamine deprivation caused very rapid PARP-1 activation, with marked PARP-1 (poly-ADP) ribosylation and protein (poly-ADP) ribosylation. This activation was not due to starvation-induced DNA double-strand breaks, which appeared at the late stages of deprivation, when most cells died. Collectively, these results highlight a broad range of consequences of glucose and glutamine starvation, which may be taken into account when nutrient availability is used as a target for anticancer therapies.
Cytokine gene polymorphisms have been found to be associated with a pre-disposition to a variety of diseases, including inflammatory and cancer diseases. The present study evaluated the influence of six cytokine gene polymorphisms on the level of genomic damage observed in peripheral blood lymphocytes from hospital pathologists chronically exposed to low doses of different xenobiotics. Lymphocytes from 50 pathologists and 50 control subjects were recruited and analyzed in Sister Chromatid Exchange (SCE) and Chromosomal Aberrations (CA) assays. The frequencies of six cytokine gene polymorphisms and their relationships with the cytogenetic damage levels were also evaluated. The results indicated that significant differences were found between pathologists and controls in terms of SCE frequency (p < 0.001) and RI values (p < 0.001), as well as in terms of CA and cells with aberrations (p < 0.001). No associations were found between all analyzed cytokine gene polymorphisms and CA frequency in both pathologists and control groups. Vice versa, among pathologists, homozygote individuals for the IL-6 G allele showed a significantly (p = 0.017) lower frequency of SCE with respect to heterozygote subjects. Similarly, for TGFβ1 codon 10 locus, homozygote for T allele and heterozygote TC subjects showed a significantly (p = 0.021) lower frequency of SCE with respect to homozygote CC individuals. Among controls, no significant differences were found in the frequency of SCE between genotypes at all loci. Based on these results, we speculate that high circulating levels of a pro-inflammatory cytokine like IL-6 and lower levels of the immunosuppressant cytokine TGFβ1 could be associated directly with a longer duration and/or greater intensity of inflammatory processes, and indirectly with significantly higher levels of genomic damage.
The SCEs and CAs results are consistent with other published data, placing hospital workers as a category at risk for genotoxic damage caused by chronic exposure to xenobiotics. The higher levels of cytogenetic damage observed among GSTT1 null, XPD 751 and XPC 939 CC homozygote subjects confirm the importance of the genetic polymorphisms analysis associated to genotoxicological studies.
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