Detection of hypoxia by measurement of DNA damage in individual cells from spheroids and murine tumours exposed to bioreductive drugs. I. Tirapazamine.

The possibility of using tirapazamine (SR 4233) to identify hypoxic cells in multicell spheroids and murine tumours was examined by measuring tirapazamine-induced DNA damage to individual cells from multicell spheroids and SCCVII murine tumours. Fluorescence microscopy and image analysis were used to measure the extent of migration of DNA from individual cells embedded in agarose and exposed to an electric field. Using both the alkaline and neutral versions of the comet assay, at least 20 times more single-strand breaks were observed in cells from fully anoxic than fully oxic Chinese hamster V79 spheroids exposed to 30 microM tirapazamine, and about 10 times more single- than double-strand breaks were observed. Cells from spheroids containing about 50% radiobiologically hypoxic cells showed a pattern of tirapazamine breaks which translated to approximately 30% well-oxygenated in SCCVII tumors growing in C3H mice was also demonstrated. Cells close to tumour blood vessels showed less DNA damage by 20 mg kg-1 tirapazamine than cells distant from blood vessels. Rejoining of single-strand breaks was exponential, with a half-time of about 1 h under aerobic conditions, but rejoining half-time increased to 2 h for cells allowed to repair under anoxic conditions. While tirapazamine damage to DNA measured using the comet assay cannot provide a direct measure of hypoxic fraction, the degree of heterogeneity in DNA damage can be used to estimate the range and distribution of individual cell oxygen contents within spheroids and tumours.