Effect of some proliferative and environmental factors on the toxicity of mitomycin C to tumor cells in vitro.

Mitomycin C (MC) was more toxic to EMT6 mouse mammary tumor cells in vitro under hypoxia than under aerobic conditions. This was evidenced both in survival curves defining the toxicity of treatment with a constant dose of MC given for different periods of time and in survival curves defining the effect of a 1-hr treatment with different concentrations of MC. Cultures preincubated for different periods from 1 to 6 hr in hypoxia all had similar MC sensitivities. In contrast, cultures preincubated in hypoxia for 4 hr then "reoxygenated" before MC treatment had the same sensitivities as cultures which had never been hypoxic. This shows that the oxygenation at the time of MC exposure, rather than the preincubation protocol, was the parameter determining cell sensitivity. Exponentially-growing (proliferating) and plateau-phase (quiescent) cultures had similar MC survival curves; neither type of culture repaired potentially lethal damage when held for up to 24 hr in HBSS after MC treatment. The sensitivity of the cells increased as the pH of the culture medium was decreased to low values (pH 7.0-6.0), but extracellular pH had no significant effect on the cytotoxicity of MC over the physiologic range (7.0-7.4). These data suggest that differences in the metabolic characteristics of cells that are hypoxic and aerobic during MC treatment, rather than perturbations of the cell proliferation patterns, the PLDR capacity of the cells, or the extracellular pH during the hypoxic incubation, are responsible for the different sensitivities of aerobic and hypoxic cells to MC in vitro.