Caspase activation 884 INDEX

Colquhoun and Schumacher [98] have shown that y-linolcnic acid and eicosapentaenoic acid, which inhibit Walker tumor growth in vivo, decreased proliferation and apoptotic index in these cells. Development of apoptosis was characterized by the enhancement of the formation of reactive oxygen species and products of lipid peroxidation and was accompanied by a decrease in the activities of mitochondrial complexes I, III, and IV, and the release of cytochrome c and caspase 3-like activation of DNA fragmentation. Earlier, a similar apoptotic mechanism of antitumor activity has been shown for the flavonoid quercetin [99], Kamp et al. [100] suggested that the asbestos-induced apoptosis in alveolar epithelial cells was mediated by iron-derived oxygen species, although authors did not hypothesize about the nature of these species (hydroxyl radicals, hydrogen peroxide, or iron complexes ). 

Fig. 12. Effect of spontaneous apoptosis on the activation of caspase-3 in human eosinophils. Eosinophils (2 x 10 /ml) were cultured for 3 h. Cells were lysed and caspase-3 activity was measured by caspase-3 colorimetric assay kit (R D Systems). Enzymatic products were measured at 405 nm with BIOTEK EL340 ELISA microplate reader (BIO-TEK Instrument Inc., Vermont). Human recombinant caspase-3 (5 U) (Calbiochem, California) was used as a positive control. The stimulation index was determined by direct comparison to the level of the normal control. Background readings from cell lysates and buffers were substracted from the readings of both induced and uninduced samples samples before calculating the stimulation index in caspase-3 activity. The differences between control and treated groups were assessed by Student s i-test. P < 0.05 P < 0.001 (Z2).

We have recently found that among 24 phenoxazine derivatives, 7 and 8 showed the highest tumor-specificity indexes of 4.3 and 4.8, respectively [37]. 7 and 8 did not apparently induce intranucleosomal DNA fragmentation, nor activate caspase-3 in HSC-2, HSC-4, and human glioblastoma T98G cells. We investigated the QSAR of 15 phenoxazine derivatives (Fig. 5) [38], using conventional and recent techniques of computation chemistry, such as the concept of chemical hardness [16-18]. 

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