Pretreatment of human colon tumor cells with DNA methylating agents inhibits their ability to repair chloroethyl monoadducts.

We have recently shown that a variety of human tumor cell lines are capable of preventing chloroethylnitrosourea (CNU)-induced DNA crosslinks, presumably by removing guanine O6-chloroethyl DNA monoadducts before crosslinks can form. Those cells capable of preventing crosslinking were of the Mer+ (Methylation repair) phenotype, and have been shown to be proficient at repair of O6-methyl-guanine adducts by the repair enzyme guanine-O6-methyl-transferase. Mer- tumor cell lines are: deficient at O6-methyl-guanine repair, incapable of preventing CNU interstrand crosslinking, and have recently been shown to lack the repair enzyme O6-methyl-transferase. We wish to report that pretreatment of Mer+ cells (HT-29 human colon carcinoma cells and IMR-90 normal human fibroblasts) with the DNA methylating agent MNNG, under conditions which should inactivate O6-methyl-transferase, apparently saturates the monoadduct repair system, and allows CNU to form interstrand crosslinks in these cells. This effect was also seen when MNU pretreatment was used, but not with MMS or streptozotocin. The formation of CNU-induced interstrand crosslinks following MNNG or MNU pretreatment was coincident with a dramatic increase in cytotoxicity as measured by colony formation assays. In contrast, cytotoxicity was only slightly increased when MMS or streptozotocin pretreatment was used.