Effects of colchicine and related substances on cell division

A STUDY OF THE EFFECTS OF DIFFERENT FORMS OF COLCHICINE ON THE ROOTS OF VICIA FABA L.*

“…The direct effect of the alkaloid, producing abnormalities such as breakdown of spindle mechanism, failure of the separation of daughter chromosomes, and the formation of giant-lobed nuclei with many nucleoli, has been recorded by Dustin (1934) and Lits (1934). A number of investigators have subsequently studied the effect of the alkaloid on mitosis and corroborated the aforesaid observations : Ludford (1936), Brues and Cohen (1936), Gavandau (1937), Nebel and Ruttle (1938), Eigsti (1938), Beams and King (1938), Levan (1938), Walker (1938), O'Mara (1939, and others. I t is important to describe the normal chromosome complement of Vick Faba L. before going into details regarding the effect of colchicine on mitosis.…”

Colchicine and new antiinflammatory drugs for the treatment of acute gout

“…TMCA showed no antimitotic activity against mouse sarcoma 180 in amounts 1,000 times larger than effective doses of colchicine (13). TMCA given to the animal a t a dose of 200 mg/kg of body weight had n o antimitotic effect on regenerating rat liver cells (14) or on mouse corneal epithelium (15). Leiter et al (16) reported that TMCA was capable of causing mitotic arrest in mouse sarcoma 73, but only i n doses 400 times greater than those of colchicine.…”

“…T h e absence of such side effects after large doses of TMCA suggests that it is not converted to colchicine. There is no evidence of conversion or metabolism of TMCA to colchicine in any of the in vivo or in vitro test systems described above, in which TMCA had no significant antimitotic effect; nor is there evidence of any effect on microtubular precursor protein (11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17).…”

Comparative analysis of chromosome segregation in human, yeasts and trypanosome

“…When vertebrate cells were treated with a spindle-depolymerizing drug, they were arrested in mitosis (Brues and Cohen, 1936). Although SAC proteins were originally discovered in budding yeast and are conserved among eukaryotes, MCC, an APC/C inhibitor consisting of Mad2, BubR1, Bub3, and Cdc20, was first purified from HeLa cells (Sudakin et al, 2001).…”