Glucose Deprivation-Induced Oxidative Stress in Human Tumor Cells: A Fundamental Defect in Metabolism?

: Recently, glucose deprivation‐induced oxidative stress has been shown to cause cytotoxicity, activation of signal transduction (i.e., ERK1, ERK2, JNK, and Lyn kinase), and increased expression of genes associated with malignancy (i.e., bFGF and c‐Myc) in MCF‐7/ADR human breast cancer cells. These results have led to the proposal that intracellular oxidation/reduction reactions involving hydroperoxides and thiols may provide a mechanistic link between metabolism, signal transduction, and gene expression in these human tumor cells. The current study shows that several other transformed human cell types appear to be more susceptible to glucose deprivation‐induced cytotoxicity and oxidative stress than untransformed human cell types. In a matched pair of normal and SV40‐transformed human fibroblasts the cytotoxic process is shown to be dependent upon ambient O2 concentration. A theoretical model to explain the results is presented and implications to unifying modern theories of cancer are discussed.