Evidence for daunomycin efflux from multidrug-resistant 2780AD human ovarian carcinoma cells against a concentration gradient.

Using a flow-through system human multidrug-resistant 2780AD ovarian carcinoma cells were exposed to flowing culture medium containing the anticancer agent daunomycin (5 microM). A pulse of medium containing verapamil caused increased cellular daunomycin accumulation, resulting in a dip in the fluorescence signal from daunomycin in the effluent. After passage of this pulse we observed an efflux of more than 90% of this extra accumulated daunomycin within 10 min. This daunomycin efflux against a concentration gradient provides evidence for drug efflux from these cells being an active process. After the addition of methylamine to the medium to increase intravesicular pH, the dip in the fluorescence signal was not decreased, indicating that vesicular transport was not an important component of this efflux.