Cadmium is a human carcinogen of worldwide concern because it accumulates in the environment due to its extremely long half-life. Its compounds are classified as human carcinogens by several regulatory agencies. Cadmium affects cell proliferation, differentiation, apoptosis and other cellular activities and can cause numerous molecular lesions that would be relevant to carcinogenesis. For a long time cadmium has been considered as a non-genotoxic carcinogen, as it is only weakly mutagenic in bacterial and mammalian cell test systems. Recently, we presented evidence that when assayed in a test system, in which both intragenic and multilocus mutations can be detected, cadmium acts as a strong mutagen which induces predominantly multilocus deletions. In this review, we discuss two mechanisms that play an important role in cadmium mutagenicity: (i) induction of reactive oxygen species (ROS); and (ii) inhibition of DNA repair. Experimental evidence suggests that cadmium at low, for environmental exposure relevant concentrations, induces mutations by inducing oxidative DNA damage and that it decreases genetic stability by inhibiting the repair of endogenous and exogenous DNA lesions, which in turn increase the probability of mutations and consequently cancer initiation by this metal.

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Astroglia cells structurally and nutritionally support neurons in the central nervous system. They play an important role in guiding the construction of the nervous system and controlling the chemical and ionic environment of neurons. They also represent the major sites for accumulation and immobilisation of toxic metal ions most probably connected with metallothioneins. For this reason astroglia cells possess high cytosolic levels of metallothioneins I, II and III (MT-I,II,III). Our aim was to establish the inducibility and metal binding of MTs in two human astrocytoma cell lines, U87 MG (astrocytoma-glioblastoma, grade IV) and IPDDC-2A (astrocytoma, grade II), on exposure to cadmium chloride (1 microM). MTs were identified by molecular weight (size exclusion chromatography) and their metal content (Cd, Zn and Cu) to follow the interactions between metals. We showed that MTs are constitutively expressed in both human astrocytoma cell lines. In accordance with the higher malignancy grade of U87 MG, the amount of MTs was higher in U87 MG than in IPDDC-2A cells. After 24 hours of exposure to Cd their expression greatly increased in both cell lines and they were capable of immobilising almost all water soluble Cd. Induction of MTs in U87 MG cells was additionally followed up to 48 hours with exposure to different concentrations of CdCl(2) (1, 10 microM). Induction was a time dependent process throughout the period. Isoform III (identified by chromatographic separation of isoform III from I/II) was present at all exposure times, but only in traces with respect to the prevailing amounts of MT-I/II isoforms. So induction can be attributed to isoform I/II only.