Pyrroline-5-carboxylate stimulates the conversion of purine antimetabolites to their nucleotide forms by a redox-dependent mechanism.

The activation of purine antimetabolites to their respective nucleotides is a step critical to their effectiveness as chemotherapeutic agents. Erythrocytes, with their relatively simple purine metabolism, are useful as a model for identifying mechanisms which enhance this 5-phosphoribosyl 1-pyrophosphate (P-Rib-PP)-dependent activation. We previously showed that pyrroline-5-carboxylate, a physiologic intermediate in the interconversions of proline, ornithine, and glutamate, markedly stimulated the pentose phosphate pathway, increased the formation of P-Rib-PP, and increased purine incorporation into nucleotides. We now report that the events initiated by pyrroline-5-carboxylate markedly increased the activation of 6-thiohypoxanthine, 6-thioguanine, and azathioprine to their respective nucleotides in intact human erythrocytes. The mechanism of this effect was directly demonstrated in studies using the conversion of hypoxanthine to inosine monophosphate as a model for pyrroline-5-carboxylate-mediated stimulation of P-Rib-PP-dependent nucleotide formation. Since the P-Rib-PP-dependent activation of these chemotherapeutic agents may be important to their clinical effectiveness, the events initiated by pyrroline-5-carboxylate may provide new insight into the nature of tumor sensitivity and resistance to these agents.