Ells G W, Chisholm K A, Simmons V A, Horrobin D F
Efamol Research Institute, Kentville, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Cancer Lett. 1996 Jan 2;98(2):207-11.
Certain polyunsaturated fatty acids can selectively kill tumor cell lines while causing little to no harm to normal cell lines. However, the mechanism of this cytotoxicity is only partially understood. Antioxidants such as vitamin E have been shown to be capable of completely blocking the cytotoxic response when administered concomitantly with the fatty acid. We report here that when vitamin E was added as late as 6 days following fatty acid treatment, at a time point when the process of cell death was well underway, any further development of cell death was blocked. This implies that the mechanism of fatty acid induced cytotoxicity does not involve a gradual compromising of the cell over the 5-7 day time course of cell death. Instead, the event triggering cell death is an oxidative phenomenon occurring over a short time span of minutes or hours, not days, and is completely blocked by vitamin E.
某些多不饱和脂肪酸能够选择性地杀死肿瘤细胞系，而对正常细胞系几乎没有损害。然而，这种细胞毒性的机制仅得到部分理解。诸如维生素E之类的抗氧化剂已被证明，当与脂肪酸同时给药时能够完全阻断细胞毒性反应。我们在此报告，当在脂肪酸处理后长达6天添加维生素E时，即在细胞死亡过程已经充分展开的时间点，细胞死亡的任何进一步发展均被阻断。这意味着脂肪酸诱导的细胞毒性机制并不涉及在细胞死亡的5至7天时间进程中细胞的逐渐受损。相反，触发细胞死亡的事件是在几分钟或几小时的短时间内发生的氧化现象，而非数天，并且完全被维生素E阻断。
