Heikki Savolainen, Dept. of Occup. Safety & Hlth., Tampere, Finland
9 July 2010
Dear Editor,
The highly interesting finding that the succinate dehydrogenase (SDH) activity was very low in malignant cells in brain while the enzyme activity was not affected in kidney cells (1) points at the possibility that a particular, possibly epigenetic, factor was involved.
The case is that alkoxyacetic acids which inhibit the SDH activity in kidney (2,3) do so also in brain (4). The low SDH acivity in tumor cells could be associated with the so-called Warburg effect. One may speculate that tumor cells can inhibit the enzyme or the translation of its gene by a hypothetical endogenous factor.
1 Feichtinger RG, Zimmermann F, Mayr JA, et al. BMC Cancer 2010;10:149
Inhibition of SDH in brain
9 July 2010
Dear Editor,
The highly interesting finding that the succinate dehydrogenase (SDH) activity was very low in malignant cells in brain while the enzyme activity was not affected in kidney cells (1) points at the possibility that a particular, possibly epigenetic, factor was involved.
The case is that alkoxyacetic acids which inhibit the SDH activity in kidney (2,3) do so also in brain (4). The low SDH acivity in tumor cells could be associated with the so-called Warburg effect. One may speculate that tumor cells can inhibit the enzyme or the translation of its gene by a hypothetical endogenous factor.
1 Feichtinger RG, Zimmermann F, Mayr JA, et al. BMC Cancer 2010;10:149
2 Laitinen J, Liesivuori J, Turunen T, Savolainen H. Chemosphere 1994;29:781
3 Liesivuori J, Laitinen J, Savolainen H. Arch Toxicol 1999;73:229
4 Savolainen H. Environ Res 1980;22:423.
Competing interests
None