Differential effects of procarbazine and methylnitrosourea on the accumulation of O6-methylguanine and the depletion and recovery of O6-alkylguanine-DNA alkyltransferase in rat tissues.

The kinetics of accumulation of the premutagenic DNA adduct O6-methylguanine (O6-meG) in the liver, blood leukocytes, lymph nodes and bone marrow of rats was examined and compared after single or multiple doses of procarbazine, a methylating cytostatic drug employed in the treatment of Hodgkin's lymphoma patients, and methylnitrosourea (MNU), an experimental methylating agent and carcinogen. Maximal O6-meG levels occurred 1-2 h after administration of single doses of procarbazine (10 mg/kg) or MNU (1 mg/kg), thereafter decreasing with half-lives of approximately 20-45 h, depending on the tissue. A relatively uniform tissue distribution was observed with both agents, with the liver generally showing highest adduct levels, followed by the lymph nodes, bone marrow and blood leukocytes which contained broadly similar amounts of O6-meG. During daily, oral administration to rats of procarbazine for 10 days at dose rates of 2.5, 5, 10 or 20 mg/kg/day (treatment analogous to that of the MOOP chemotherapy protocol for Hodgkin's lymphoma) followed by animal death on different days (in each case 24 h after the last treatment), a biphasic mode of O6-meG induction was observed: an initially steep build-up during the first 3-4 days was followed by a transient decline in the rate of accumulation, in turn followed by a second wave of accumulation and then a further slow-down. During the same treatment, liver O6-methylguanine-DNA alkyltransferase (AGT) declined in a dose-related manner. AGT recovery after the end of treatment was slow, taking nearly 20 days after the end of the high-dose treatment to return to control levels, despite the fact that all detectable adducts had been lost from DNA within 3 days after the end of treatment. A similar depletion and slow recovery of AGT in the liver, blood lymphocytes, bone marrow and lymph nodes was observed after treatment with a single dose of 100 mg/kg procarbazine. In contrast to these observations, O6-meG accumulated smoothly during a 10 day administration of MNU (1 or 10 mg/kg/day) to reach a steady-state within 5-6 days, while liver AGT was partially depleted after the high dose and recovered fully within 72 h of cessation of treatment. Similarly, a single dose of MNU (35 mg/kg) resulted in AGT depletion followed by rapid recovery in all four tissues examined. It is concluded that procarbazine (but not MNU) causes a decrease in cellular AGT concentrations by a mechanism additional to suicide repair of O6-meG.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)