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Searches for Exploitable Biochemical Differences Between Normal and Cancer Cells

II. Nucleic Acid Purine Metabolism in Human Tumors^*

( Kettering-Meyer Laboratory, Southern Research Institute, Birmingham, Alabama; Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research, New York)

The incorporation of C¹⁴-labeled compounds (formate, glycine, adenine, guanine, hypoxanthine, 2,6-diaminopurine, and xanthine) into nucleic acid purines has been measured in heterologous implants of human tumors and in livers and intestines of the hosts. The tumors were a sarcoma (HS-1) and an epidermoid carcinoma (HEP-3) grown in hamsters and rats treated with cortisone.

Relative to normal tissues, both tumors employed reasonably well the de novo pathway to nucleic acid purines, failed to incorporate guanine significantly, and utilized hypoxanthine very poorly. The extent of utilization of adenine by tumors was about the same as that by liver but less than that by intestine. Diaminopurine was found to be a good precursor of nucleic acid guanine in both tumors relative to normal tissues. Xanthine was not utilized significantly by tumor or by normal tissues.

The results are in essential agreement with those obtained previously with a spectrum of mouse and rat neoplasms.

^* This work was made possible by grants from the American Cancer Society, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Inc., the C. F. Kettering Foundation, and the Biology and Medicine Division, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. Presented in part before the Division of Biological Chemistry, 127th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society, Cincinnati, Ohio, March 29 to April 7, 1955.

Received 11/ 9/55.