Effects of 2',2'-difluorodeoxycytidine (Gemcitabine) on wild type and variant mouse leukemia L1210 cells.

2',2'-Difluorodeoxycytidine (Gemcitabine, dFdCyd) is a cytotoxic agent which is active toward a variety of tumor cells. It has been shown that there are multiple intracellular sites of action which include ribonucleotide reductase and DNA polymerase. In these studies, the effects of dFdCyd on wild-type mouse leukemia L1210 cells and variant L1210 cell lines which had alterations at the ribonucleotide reductase site or at the deoxyribonucleoside kinase site were studied. For cell growth, the IC50 value for dFdCyd in wild-type L1210 cells was 3.1 nM. In the variant cell lines, the IC50 values were: hydroxyurea-resistant (HU), 3.3 nM; deoxyadenosine-resistant (Y8), 1.8 nM; pyrazoloimidazole/deoxyadenosine-resistant (ED2), 1.9 nM; and deoxyguanosine-resistant (dGuo-R), 44.7 nM. The dGuo-R cell line had a relatively specific loss of the deoxyribonucleoside kinase responsible for phosphorylating deoxyguanosine and cytosine arabinoside with little loss of the deoxycytidine kinase activity. DFdCyd had no effect on the total uptake of [14C]cytidine into the cells or incorporation into RNA. DFdCyd inhibited the conversion of [14C]cytidine to deoxycytidine nucleotides and incorporation into DNA. However, the incorporation of cytidine into DNA was inhibited to a greater extent than was the inhibition of in situ ribonucleotide reductase activity. Ribonucleotide reductase activity in cell-free extracts prepared from L1210 cells treated with dFdCyd (20 nM) overnight was reduced by 50%. These results show that cell lines which have increased levels of ribonucleotide reductase activity (HU and ED2) or loss of feedback inhibition by dATP (ED2 and Y8) are still sensitive to dFdCyd. The findings indicate that ribonucleotide reductase is not the primary site of inhibition by dFdCyd.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)