Induction of apoptosis by UFT and evaluation of antitumor effectiveness

Apoptosis is known to be induced in cancer cells by carcinostatic agents, radiation, hyperthermia or anticancer therapies. Gene products, for example p53, bcl-2 have been shown to be involved with the induction of apoptosis. Therefore we studied the relation between p53 genotype and induction of apoptosis by various carcinostatic agents using a number of human cancer cell strains. Second, hyperthermia was applied to patients with rectal cancer, and the change in the number of apoptotic cells was analyzed in vivo to evaluate the relation between induction of apoptosis and the effectiveness of chemotherapy and thermotherapy. In addition, UFT was given orally to nude mice transplanted with human cancer cell strains to analyze the apoptosis inducing power of UFT and the effectiveness of its antitumor activity. The following conclusions were drawn following these experiments: 1) there is a strong tendency for induction of apoptosis to occur with normal p53 developed tumor, 2) induction of apoptosis correlates with the effectiveness of antitumor activity, 3) UFT induces apoptosis, and 4) at least a part of its antitumor effectiveness is due to apoptosis.