Resistance to 5-fluorouracil associated with increased cytidine triphosphate levels in V79 Chinese hamster cells.

Clones stably resistant to the toxic effects of 5-fluorouracil have been isolated from V79.5 Chinese hamster fibroblast cells by a single-step selection procedure. The 5-fluorouracil-resistant lines were found to (a) have an auxotrophic requirement when grown in dialyzed fetal calf serum that was satisfied by the addition of either thymidine, deoxyuridine, or deoxycytidine to the medium, (b) be cross-resistant to the toxic effects of 1-beta-D-arabinofuranosylcytosine and to high concentrations of thymidine, (c) have increased intracellular levels of cytidine 5'-triphosphate (CTP) and deoxycytidine 5'-triphosphate and decreased levels of uridine 5'-triphosphate, (d) also be resistant to 5-fluorouridine but not to 5-fluorodeoxyuridine, and (e) incorporate less 5-fluorouracil into RNA than do the wild-type cells. The primary lesion in these mutant appears to be an altered CTP synthetase activity which is no longer sensitive to negative regulation by CTP. The resulting increased CTP levels appear to be responsible for the various phenotypic characteristics of these mutants, including the resistance to 5-fluorouracil.