Purine metabolic cycle in normal and leukemic leukocytes.

Purine metabolism and reutilization pathways were studied as they applied to normal and leukemic leukocytes. The enzyme activities were expressed in terms of the quantity of protein extracted and per 10(10) cells. Whereas the protein extracted and the enzyme activities from normal lymphocytes were relatively constant, considerable variation was noted in cases of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). This variability in the properties of the leukemic cells suggests that the difference may be useful in the subclassification of the leukemias. The studies of the complete enzyme system were done with 300 million cells. The extraction of 350,000 normal lymphocytes/mul gave a soluble protein concentration of 1.46+/-0.16 mg protein per ml, and the yield from the same number of CLL lymphocytes varied between 0.72 and 8.32 mg protein per ml. The 5'-nucleotidase activity gave an inverse correlation with the amount of extractable protein. In individual cases of CLL, the protein concentrations and the 5'-nucleotidase activities were found on either side of the normal values. In most cases, the adenosine deaminase of CLL lymphocytic cell extracts was lower than normal, and the adenosine kinase was higher; in the CLL cells, these two enzymes gave a positive correlation with one another. Little or no difference was observed in the activities of the purine nucleoside phosphorylases in extracts of normal or leukemic lymphocytes and granulocytes. The hypoxanthine-guanine and adenine phosphoribosyltransferase activities increased in the leukemic granulocytes but almost always showed a decrease in the CLL lymphocytes when compared with the normal cells. Most of the leukemic cells had greater than normal activities of the enzymes synthesizing phosphoribosyl pyrophosphate when tested with the purines. The total nucleotide produced from adenine and guanine with adenine- and hypoxanthine-guanine phosphoribosyltransferase was about equal in normal and leukemic lymphocytes, but the proportion of the adenosine 5'-triphosphate in the product was much greater with the leukemic cells. This suggested that the ribosyltransferase activities were the same in both types of cells, but the nucleoside kinases and the nucleoside diphosphate kinases were more active in the leukemic cells. Inosine monophosphate dehydrogenase was less active than normal in the CLL cell extracts and was not directly related to the amount of inosine monophosphate generated from hypoxanthine.