DNA adducts and the mechanism of carcinogenesis and cytotoxicity of methylating agents of environmental and clinical significance.

DNA adducts are covalent complexes formed between genotoxic carcinogens and DNA bases, and constitute a critical early intermediate on the pathway of chemical carcinogenesis. Their accumulation in different tissues reflects the amount of activated carcinogen reaching DNA, and can therefore serve as an index of the biologically relevant dose reaching the target tissues or cells. Methylating agents are of interest in view of their occurrence in the environment and their use as cytotoxic drugs in cancer chemotherapy. Current evidence indicates that O6-methylguanine plays a particularly important role in the mutagenic, carcinogenic, and cytotoxic activities of methylating agents. O6-Methylguanine is repaired efficiently by the enzyme O6-alkylguanine-DNA alkyltransferase (AGT). Lack of this enzyme results in excessive accumulation of O6-methylguanine and recent evidence suggests that significant quantitative effects on adduct accumulation may be linked to conditions of very low AGT levels. This would be important from the point of view of clinical practice, since modulation of AGT is under investigation as a means of enhancing the therapeutic efficacy of clinical agents acting via the production of O6-methylguanine and related adducts, such as, for example, procarbazine, dacarbazine, and some nitrosoureas. The measurement of O6-methylguanine in human DNA has been employed as a tool to investigate the role of environmental methylating agents in human carcinogenesis. While the nature and origin of the methylating agents responsible for these adducts is currently unknown, recent studies in patas monkeys have shown that N-nitrosodimethylamine, a methylating carcinogen to which human exposure is well documented, is capable of efficiently generating O6-methylguanine in most tissues, including fetal tissues. Furthermore, it has been found that this damage is substantially enhanced by the coadministration of ethyl alcohol which acts by inhibiting the liver first-pass metabolism of the carcinogen, an observation which supports the hypothesis that alcohol consumption may act as a risk factor in human carcinogenesis by augmenting the action of nitrosamines.