Mutagenic responses of thirteen anticancer drugs on mutation induction at multiple genetic loci and on sister chromatid exchanges in Chinese hamster ovary cells.

The mutagenic responses of 13 antineoplastic drugs, namely, chlorambucil, busulfan, lomustine, dacarbazine, Adriamycin, daunomycin, bleomycin, VM-26, VP16-213, ellipticine, actinomycin D, mitomycin C, and cis-diamminedichloroplatinum(II) have been determined in two different assay systems in Chinese hamster ovary cells which measure mutation induction at multiple genetic loci and the frequencies of sister chromatid exchanges. The five genetic loci whose responses have been measured include those conferring resistance to 6-thioguanine (Thgr or TGr), ouabain, emetine, methylglyoxal bis(guanylhydrazone), and 5,6-dichlororibofuranosylbenzimidazole; of these, only the Thgr marker affects a function (hypoxanthine-guanine phosphoribosyltransferase, hgprt locus) which is not essential for cellular growth. All of these drugs showed a dose-dependent increase in mutation frequency at the hgprt locus, but their responses at other genetic loci differed greatly and showed marked specificity for different chemical classes of the drugs. The observed locus-specific differences in response to these drugs suggest that they may differ in terms of their accessibility or affinity to different chromosomal regions. All of these drugs also led to a significant increase in the frequency of sister chromatid exchanges, and a very good correlation was observed between the activity of these drugs in the sister chromatid exchange assay and the mutagenic response of the hgprt locus. Of the drugs which were examined, VM-26, VP16-213, chlorambucil, mitomycin C, and cis-diamminedichloroplatinum(II) showed a particularly strong response in both of these assay systems. In terms of the minimum concentration which gave a mutagenic response, the drugs differed from each other by a factor of about 100,000, with actinomycin D, VM-26, and daunomycin being mutagenic in the range of 3 x 10(-8) to 1 x 10(-7) M, whereas dacarbazine produced a weak mutagenic response only at about 2 x 10(-3) M.