Summary Chronic hypoxia increases the expression of a set of stress proteins (oxygen regulated proteins or ORPs) which is implicated in the development of drug resistance and radiation sensitivity in tumour cells. Five major ORPs have been documented, and two, ORP 80 and ORP 100, are considered to be identical to the glucose regulated stress proteins GRP78 and GRP94, respectively. We report here that ORP 33 is a form of the heme catabolic enzyme, heme oxygenase, using evidence obtained from northern blotting, two-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and western analysis. Heme oxygenase is believed to be an important component of the cellular response to oxidative stress. The significance of heme oxygenase as a hypoxiainduced stress protein is discussed.Hypoxia is an important environmental stress encountered in some solid tumours that can influence the effectiveness of radiation, hyperthermia and chemo-therapy (Coleman, 1988;Heacock & Sutherland, 1990). Poor vascularisation of tumours is common, and this results in impaired delivery of oxygen, glucose and other nutrients to cells distant from blood vessels, as well as inefficient removal of metabolic wastes (Sutherland, 1988). Among the many changes in tumour cellular physiology that occur under hypoxic stress, it has been observed that a group of proteins, called oxygen regulated proteins or ORPs, can be induced to undergo enhanced rates of synthesis depending on the severity and duration of the stress (Heacock & Sutherland, 1990;Anderson et al., 1979;Heacock & Sutherland, 1986). Moreover, the kinetics of the development of resistance to the drug adriamycin in vitro have been reported to correlate with the enhanced expression of some of these ORPs Subjeck & Shyy, 1986). Another phenotype associated with chronic hypoxia is enhanced radiation sensitivity following reoxygenation. Although low oxygen is known to give rise to radiation resistance, through a diminishment of the phenomenon known as the oxygen effect (von Sonntag, 1987), upon reoxygenation chronically hypoxic cells exhibit enhanced sensitivity to gamma radiation (Kwok & Sutherland, 1989a;Kwok & Sutherland, 1989b). The mechanistic basis of this effect is not understood, although it may be a consequence of the stress caused by reoxygenation rather than by hypoxia per se.The molecular weights assigned to five major ORPs are 260, 150, 100, 80 and 33 kilodaltons (Heacock & Sutherland, 1986 In experiments designed to determine a time course for the induction of heme oxygenase under hypoxia, the chambers were opened, the plates were placed on ice, the media was removed by aspiration and the cells were immediately lysed as above by the addition of cold lysis buffer.Polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and western blotting The labelled Triton soluble proteins were analyzed by twodimensional SDS-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis accordCorrespondence: R.M. Sutherland.