Hyperthermia and bleomycin schedules on V79 Chinese hamster cell cytotoxicity in vitro

The effect of sequence and timing of hyperthermia (43 degrees) and bleomycin on Chinese hamster cells (V79) has been investigated. Hyperthermia preceding bleomycin treatment produced a greater cytotoxic effect than bleomycin treatment preceding hyperthermia. Furthermore, it appears that the combination of hyperthermia and bleomycin becomes less effective if the application of bleomycin is delayed. The enhancement of cytotoxicity with hyperthermia first may be related to the effect of heat on the intracellular bleomycin degradation ability and protein synthesis. V79 cells treated with a protein synthesis inhibitor, cycloheximide, before bleomycin (but not in the reversed sequence) also showed a markedly lower level of survival. As for hyperthermia treatment, pretreatment with cycloheximide did not change the uptake of bleomycin. These results suggest that hyperthermia and cycloheximide have increased the effectiveness of bleomycin and are consistent with the observation on chromosome damage induced by hyperthermia-bleomycin and cycloheximide-bleomycin treatments reported in the literature.