BIOCHEMICAL ALTERATIONS DUE TO MEMBRANE DAMAGE IN BENZO (a)PYRENE INDUCED EXPERIMENTAL LUNG CANCER
Mangalathu Sukumaran Pillai Veena, G Nithya, Sathiamoorthy Dhivya, Dhanapal Sakthisekaran · 2012
Cancer is an important cause of morbidity and morta lity worldwide. Each year 9 million new cancer case s are detected and 5 million people die of it. Three canc er sites the lung, breast and liver still account f or most of our treatment failures and these cancers are targeted a s the today’s therapeutic battle ground. The presen t study is focused on assessing the biochemical alterations in the male swiss albino mice on induction with Benzo (a)pyrene [B(a)P] which is considered to be a potential carci nogen primarily affecting the lungs.The lung has th e potential of metabolizing many foreign chemicals to a vast array of metabolites with different pharmacological and toxicological properties. Inspite of greater capaci ty for metabolizing harmful compounds, there are st ill a large number of chemicals that have damaging effects on t he lung. The use of B(a)P, which is a chemical carc inogen, causes the generation of free radicals, which is re sponsible for the initial assaults that occur in th e cell that leads to prolonged carcinogenesis. Hence assessment of membrane damage with respect to glycoproteins and ATPases would help in measuring the degree of impact on the cells. Further analysis of levels of nucleic acid content, activities of marker enzymes would indicate the ext ent of membrane damage in lung carcinoma bearing animals. The current study is an attempt to understand the a ssaults caused to the membranes due to B(a)P induce d lung carcinogenesis during varied induction periods. He nce the present investigation has been focused to e valuate the damage caused by B(a)P in the initiation and promot ion events leading to cancer. Since glycoproteins p lay an important role in cell recognition and membrane ATPases reflect the membrane integrity, these above sa id parameters play a very important role in the assess ment of membrane damage of a cell which is said to be an early event taking place during the oxidative insult caus ed by B(a)P induced free radicals.