Differential changes in purine nucleotides after Doxorubicin treatment of human cancer cells in vitro

The present investigation was performed to elucidate the role of purine nucleotides as potential indicators of chemosensitivity of malignant tumors. Drug-sensitive (s) and -resistant (r) tumor cell lines grown as monolayers (s: T47D, MCF-7 wild-type; r: NCI/ADR-RES, MCF-7/MDR) or as multicellular spheroids (T47D; NCI/ADR-RES) were exposed to 0.1, 1.0, and 10.0 microM Doxorubicin for up to 24 h. Purine nucleotides were assayed using HPLC and with some selected spheroids using imaging bioluminescence. The data show that in the time frame of the experiments reproducible and statistically significant changes in the nucleotides only occur at the highest drug concentration investigated. Under the…