Gynecologic Oncology

Biography

Biography: Xueqing Wang

Abstract

Taxol inhibits cell replication by disrupting normal mitotic spindle formation and arresting cell growth in the M phase of the cell cycle. Passage through mitosis is an absolute requirement for Taxol-induced death. The replication time of some ovarian cancer  cells is approximately 27 h and resistant cell lines even more longer. Results from our laboratory indicates that most cells were in G0/G1 or S stage during the whole cells cycle and the resistant cell lines have a significantly higher proportion of cells existing in the G0-G1 stage of the cell cycle compared to the sensitive cell lines. Thus, a disparity exists between the longer doubling time of cancer cells (27 h) and the shorter window of Taxol action (3 h-9 h), as such most cells do not occupy the M stage during the short window of Taxol action. We speculated that formation of drug resistance toward Taxol in ovarian cancer could be partly attributed to the longer doubling time of these cells. We used cell-cycle synchronization to test the above assumption. Cell-cycle synchronization resulted in an increase in the number of cells passing through the M stage at a given time and reduced the toxicity of Taxol toward cells in the non-proliferative phase, improving its effectiveness and decreasing the chance of drug-resistant formation.