Restimulation of cell cycle progression by hypoxic tumour cells with deoxynucleosides requires ppm oxygen tension.

Continuous exposure of Ehrlich ascites tumour cells to argon-CO2 under in vitro conditions caused rapid cessation of cell proliferation. On fixing the O2 level at 10 ppm in the protective atmosphere (0.001% in comparison with about 20% in normoxic atmosphere), G1 and early S cells remained stationary while G2 cells continued to pass from G2 into mitosis, to remain in a non-growing state in G1 of the subsequent cycle. Re-aeration of cells following 12 h hypoxia induced up to 25% of the population to continue DNA synthesis without a preceding cell division, as revealed by flow-cytometric analysis. Supplementation of cells cultured under hypoxia with a combination of deoxynucleosides (100 microM deoxycytidine, 10 microM deoxyadenosine, 10 microM deoxyguanosine) was found to stimulate reprogression through the cycle, provided the residual oxygen tension in the protective atmosphere exceeded 40 ppm. The increase in the number of cells with a DNA content of more than 4 C and in the number of binucleate cells observed after re-aeration of hypoxic cells was not prevented by deoxynucleosides or by uridine, which were present in the medium either during hypoxia of from the beginning of reoxygenation. These results indicate that the development of polyploidy as a result of oxygen deficiency cannot be influenced by improvement of RNA and DNA synthetic precursors.