Variability of gemcitabine accumulation and its relationship to expression of nucleoside transporters in peripheral blood mononuclear cells.

The concentrative nucleoside transporter CNT1 and equilibrated nucleoside transporter ENT1 mediate the cellular uptake of naturally occurring pyrimidine and purine nucleosides and many structurally diverse anticancer and antiviral nucleoside analogs, thereby regulating drug responses or toxicity at the target site. The objectives of this study were to analyze interindividual variations in the cellular accumulation of gemcitabine and to examine the correlation between the uptake of gemcitabine and expression levels of CNT1 and ENT1 transporters. Gemcitabine was a substrate for both CNT1 and ENT1 with higher affinity to CNT1 than to ENT1. The difference in gemcitabine uptake was 4.8-fold in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from 10 subjects. Among these, the CNT1- and ENT1-mediated uptake of gemcitabine was 14.3- and 16.5-folds, respectively. CNT1-mediated gemcitabine uptake showed a higher correlation with the CNT1 expression level than did ENT1-mediated uptake with ENT1 expression level. In conclusion, CNT1 seemed to be a major contributing factor to gemcitabine uptake in PBMCs and showed 14.3-fold inter-individual variations. However, ENT1-mediated uptake of gemcitabine might compensate for the total uptake of gemcitabine; therefore, the variation in the apparent accumulation of gemcitabine was smaller than that of the individual transporters.