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1: Oncogene. 2002 Aug 12;21(35):5483-95.
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5-Azacytidine and 5-aza-2'-deoxycytidine as inhibitors of DNA methylation: mechanistic studies and their implications for cancer therapy.

Christman JK.

Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and UNMC/Eppley Cancer Center, University of Nebraska Medical Center, 984525 University Medical Center, Omaha, Nebraska, NE 68198-4525, USA. jchristm@unmc.edu

5-Azacytidine was first synthesized almost 40 years ago. It was demonstrated to have a wide range of anti-metabolic activities when tested against cultured cancer cells and to be an effective chemotherapeutic agent for acute myelogenous leukemia. However, because of 5-azacytidine's general toxicity, other nucleoside analogs were favored as therapeutics. The finding that 5-azacytidine was incorporated into DNA and that, when present in DNA, it inhibited DNA methylation, led to widespread use of 5-azacytidine and 5-aza-2'-deoxycytidine (Decitabine) to demonstrate the correlation between loss of methylation in specific gene regions and activation of the associated genes. There is now a revived interest in the use of Decitabine as a therapeutic agent for cancers in which epigenetic silencing of critical regulatory genes has occurred. Here, the current status of our understanding of the mechanism(s) by which 5-azacytosine residues in DNA inhibit DNA methylation is reviewed with an emphasis on the interactions of these residues with bacterial and mammalian DNA (cytosine-C5) methyltransferases. The implications of these mechanistic studies for development of less toxic inhibitors of DNA methylation are discussed.

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PMID: 12154409 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]