Effects of glutathione on alkylation and cross-linking of DNA by mitomycin C. Isolation of a ternary glutathione-mitomycin-DNA adduct.

Mitomycin C (MC), a clinically used antitumor antibiotic, is known to alkylate DNA monofunctionally, and to generate DNA interstrand cross-links by bifunctional alkylation. Both processes are dependent on the reductive activation of MC. Glutathione (GSH) was shown here to cause three types of changes in the pattern of alkylation of DNA by MC: (i) GSH caused a decrease of both the overall covalent binding ratio of MC to Micrococcus luteus DNA and the extent of interstrand cross-linking of 32P-pBR322 DNA, as the concentration of GSH was increased in the reaction media. Approximately 50% inhibition of cross-linking was observed at 20 mM GSH. It is likely that the inhibition is caused by the formation of MC-GSH conjugates competing with DNA alkylation, since both processes are triggered by reductive activation of MC [Sharma, M., and Tomasz, M. (1994) Chem. Res. Toxicol. (preceding paper in this issue)]. (ii) GSH causes a switch from monofunctional to bifunctional activation of MC by the prototype "monofunctional" MC-activating agents H2/PtO2 and NADPH:cytochrome c reductase/NADPH. This was seen by the predominance of bisadducts (i.e., cross-linked adducts) instead of the usual monoadducts in the enzymatic digests of MC-DNA complexes formed in the presence of GSH, as analyzed by HPLC. This finding suggests that GSH participates in the bifunctional activation of MC in vivo. (iii) A ternary MC-GSH-DNA adduct (6) was formed in the presence of GSH both with M. luteus DNA and with a synthetic duplex oligonucleotide; in this adduct the mitosene C1 is linked to N2 of guanine and the mitosene C10 is linked to GSH via sulfur.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)