Radiation sensitivities in various anticancer-drug-resistant human lung cancer cell lines and mechanism of radiation cross-resistance in a cisplatin-resistant cell line.

To determine whether there exists cross-resistance between anticancer drugs and radiation, six drug-resistant human lung cancer cell lines and their parental cell lines were examined for radiosensitivity using a growth-inhibition assay. Only one cisplatin-resistant cell line, PC-9/CDDP, showed cross-resistance to radiation. The other three cisplatin-resistant cell lines (PC-7/CDDP, PC-4/CDDP, and H69/CDDP), an etoposide-resistant cell line (H69/VP) and a camptothecin-resistant cell line (PC-7/CPT) did not show cross-resistance to radiation. To analyze the mechanism of radiation resistance in PC-9/CDDP cells, the formation and repair of radiation-induced DNA single-strand breaks (ssb) and double-strand breaks (dsb) were examined by alkaline elution and neutral elution respectively. Although the formation of DNA ssb and repair of both DNA ssb and DNA dsb were the same for both cell lines, the formation of DNA dsb in PC-9/CDDP cells was significantly less than those in PC-9 cells. Measurement of intracellular glutathione content in all of the cell lines revealed that only PC-9/CDDP cells had a significant increase of glutathione content compared to the parental cells. Buthionine sulfoximine treatment of PC-9/CDDP cells caused an increase of DNA dsb to the same levels as in PC-9 cells after irradiation and caused a complete radiosensitization. These results indicate that cross-resistance to radiation in drug-resistant cells in a rare phenomenon, and increased glutathione content may play a crucial role in the emergence of cross-resistance to radiation in the drug-resistant cells.