Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
Pivot Concepts:   Target Concepts:
Query: EC:2.4.2.8 (hypoxanthine-guanine phosphoribosyltransferase)
 2,527 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

6-Mercaptopurine and 6-thioguanine strongly inhibited the zero-trans entry of hypoxanthine into Novikoff rat hepatoma cells which lacked hypoxanthine/guanine phosphoribosyltransferase, whereas 8-azaguanine had no significant effect. 6-Mercaptopurine was transported by the hypoxanthine carrier with about the same efficiency as its natural substrates (Michaelis-Menten constant = 372 +/- 23 microM; maximum velocity = 30 +/- 0.7 pmol/microl cell H2O per s). 8-Azaguanine entry into the cells, on the other hand, showed no sign of saturability and was not significantly affected by substrates of the hypoxanthine/guanine carrier. The rate of entry of 8-azaguanine at 10-100 microM amounted to only about 5% of that of hypoxanthine transport and was related to its lipid solubility in the same manner as observed for various substances whose permeation through the plasma membrane is believed to be non-mediated. Only the non-ionized form of 8-azaguanine (pKa = 6.6) permeated the cell membrane. Studies with wild type Novikoff cells showed that permeation into the cell was the main rate-determining step in the conversion of extracellular 8-azaguanine to intracellular aza-GTP and its incorporation into nucleic acids. In contrast, 6-mercaptopurine was rapidly transported into cells and phosphoribosylated; the main rate-determining step in its incorporation into nucleic acids was the further conversion of 6-mercaptopurine riboside 5'-monophosphate.
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PMID:Facilitated transport of 6-mercaptopurine and 6-thioguanine and non-mediated permeation of 8-azaguanine in Novikoff rat hepatoma cells and relationship to intracellular phosphoribosylation. 719 51

The role of guanine deaminase in selective cellular resistance to 8-azaguanine was examined, using eight mammalian cell lines and their subclonal derivatives isolated on the basis of increasing resistance to this drug. 8-Azaguanine and 6-thioguanine are synthetic analogs of guanine and are lethal to cells with normal hypoxanthine phosphoribosyltransferase (HPRT) activity. In principle, however, HPRT-positive cells could become selectively resistant to 8-azaguanine if, by any mechanism, the cells expressed higher levels of guanine deaminase. This is because 8-azaguanine, but not 6-thioguanine, is converted by this enzyme to a noncytotoxic metabolite, 8-azaxanthine. Our study shows that HPRT-positive cells inherently resistant to relatively high levels of 8-azaguanine contain high levels of guanine deaminase. In general, guanine deaminase activity was higher in 8-azaguanine-resistant cells, regardless of their HPRT activity. Our results support the view that elevated guanine deaminase activity constitutes a potential mechanism of selective 8-azaguanine resistance in cells with normal HPRT activity. Guanine deaminase levels were significantly elevated in HPRT-positive cells briefly exposed to sublethal concentrations of 8-azaguanine, but this elevation was transient. Long-term exposure of cells to increasingly higher levels of the drug did not lead to high stable levels of guanine deaminase, indicating that 8-azaguanine is not an inducer of guanine deaminase in the cells examined.
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PMID:Specific resistance to 8-azaguanine in cells with normal hypoxanthine phosphoribosyltransferase (HPRT) activity: the role of guanine deaminase. 727 56