The concept of programmed cell death has been increasingly considered from various aspects since early 1970’s. Primarily, knowledge of apoptosis referred to morphological changes in which chromatin is condensed and increasingly fragmented, revealed as small structure in the nucleus. The membrane shrinks and the cell becomes dense as can be seen by flow cytometry. Interestingly, similar modes of cell deletion were observed in nematodes indicating that apoptosis is a highly conserved machinery. Three Caeonorhabditis elegans gene products are found to have high homology with mammalian apoptotic genes: CED-9 inhibits apoptosis and is related to bcl-2; CED-3 and CED-4 promote apoptosis and are related to caspase 9 and APAF-1. Apoptosis is not accidental death, but a highly controlled and medically important molecular process. More general terms such as ‘physiological’ or ‘regulated’ cell death cover different morphologies and sequences. Programmed suicide of cells that were subjected to toxic exogenous and endogenous stimuli plays a key role in understanding cancer development and its treatment. Apoptosis involves sequences of events that may overlap and play contradictory or antagonistic roles in cell death. Generally, the ability to trigger apoptotic processes in cancer cells would benefit an organism by keeping homeostasis intact. Programmed cell death is a regularly present mechanism, for instance, in lymphocyte recruitment in the thymus where immature lymphocytes may recognize host antigens. Therefore, such lymphocytes become apoptotic and are removed by macrophages. Removal prevents possible autoimmune diseases. Unlike apoptosis, necrosis is a passive process of cell death recognizable by membrane morphological changes and accompanied by leakage of intracellular material into intercellular space that may cause inflammation in the organism. Signals that may initiate apoptosis are generally classified into two groups: signals that launch extrinsic apoptotic pathways starting with aggregation of death receptors and intrinsic apoptotic pathways starting with disruption of intracellular homeostasis such as the release of mitochondrial factors or DNA degradation. Early in the process, apoptotic signals may lead to a broad range of signaling mechanisms such as DNA repair and assessment of DNA damage (check points). Thus, failure in any of these steps can cause a defective apoptotic response that plays a decisive role in both tumorigenesis and drug resistance in tumor treatment. More distinctly, the capability of cancer cells to go into apoptosis prevents further neoplastic changes. Generally, the purpose of this study is to investigate the balance between formation of genomic damage and induction of apoptosis under genotoxic stress. After genotoxic insult there are different possibilities for the fate of a cell (Figure 1). The genomic integrity is analyzed at cellular checkpoints, usually leading to a delay in cell cycle progression if DNA was damaged. Mutations in genes such as p53 and p21 change the cellular response to genotoxic stress and may alter the balance between apoptosis and genomic damage. However, p53 is usually mutated or not expressed in 70% of human tumors. Alterations in p53 states that reflect distinct apoptotic response upon induction of DNA damage were examined. In this study, three cell lines with distinct p53 states were used: TK6 harboring wild-type p53, WTK1 with mutated p53 and NH32 with knocked out p53. In the present work we applied different approaches to investigate the correlation between DNA damage and apoptotic responsiveness in cancer cell lines with different p53 states or in hormone responsive cell lines with over expressed bcl-2 gene. We were focused on effects caused by temporary down regulation of the p53 and Bcl-2 activity in human lymphoblastoid cell lines. In addition, we investigated the impact of estradiol-induced proliferation on apoptosis and DNA damage in stably transfected cells with bcl-2gene. / Apoptotische Ereignisse als Reaktion auf exogen induzierten gentoxischen Schaden erhält die Homeostase von Organismen durch die Entfernung betroffener Zellen. Fehler in der apoptotischen Reaktion spielen sowohl für die Tumorentstehung als auch für die Chemotherapie-Resistenz eine wichtige Rolle. Der Zweck dieser Studie war es, die Balance von Genom-Schaden, gemessen durch Mikrokern-Bildung, und der Induktion von Apoptose als Reaktion auf gentoxischen Stress zu untersuchen. Mikrokerne erscheinen als Folge unterschiedlicher Chromosomenaberrationen. Der Mikrokern-Test hat schnell an Akzeptanz gewonnen und wird inzwischen als Routine-Test für Gentoxizitätsprüfung eingesetzt. Die Hypothese war, dass die Mikrokern-Bildung umgekehrt mit dem Auftreten von Apoptose korreliert ist. In drei humanen Zelllinien mit wildtyp p53, mutiertem p53 und knock-out p53 konnten durch Behandlung mit dem gentoxischen Topoisomerase-II-Hemmer Etoposid Apoptosen induziert werden. Die dabei beobachtete Erhöhung der Mikrokern-Häufigkeit war in Zellen mit mutiertem p53 stärker ausgeprägt als in Zellen mit wildtyp p53 oder knock-out p53. Drei Vorgehensweisen wurden angewandt, um die molekularen Mechanismen zu verändern, welche die Wechselbeziehung zwischen apoptotischen Ereignissen und induziertem DNA-Schaden bestimmen. Im ersten Ansatz wurde die Apoptose vorübergehend durch Pifithrin (PFT-α), einen p53-Blocker, verhindert. So wurde der Einfluss verschiedener p53-Zustände (Wildtyp, mutiert und knock-out) auf DNA-Reparatur, den Zellzyklus und Apoptose untersucht. Der zweite Ansatz bestand aus einer vorübergehenden Transfektion mit bcl-2 Antisense Oligonukleotiden zur Reduktion der Bcl-2-Expression. Der dritte Weg war eine stabile Transfektion des bcl-2-Gens in eine estrogenrezeptorhaltigen Zelllinie. Dies ermöglichte den Einfluss von β-Estradiol-induzierter Zellproliferation zu untersuchen.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uni-wuerzburg.de/oai:opus.bibliothek.uni-wuerzburg.de:914 |
| Date | January 2004 |
| Creators | Vukicevic, Vladimir |
| Source Sets | University of Würzburg |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | doctoralthesis, doc-type:doctoralThesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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