Viral transformation of baby hamster kidney cells affects the oxygen sensitivity of nitroxide reduction

In order to explore and expand the potential applications of nitroxides, it is important to understand how nitroxides are metabolized by living systems. We studied the oxygen sensitivity of a BHK (baby hamster kidney) cell line and BHK cells that had been transformed by adenovirus to determine if the process of adenoviral transformation affects nitroxide metabolism. When the BHK cells are transformed by adenovirus, they reduce nitroxides essentially independently of oxygen concentration. In addition, the rate of reduction of the nitroxides decreases by a factor of 10 compared to the rate of reduction in BHK cells. These data suggest to us that the process of viral transformation has affected dramatically the metabolism of these cells; one possible interpretation is that the viral transformed cells lost the ability to perform oxidative phosphorylation. We believe that this is a metabolic event which could be exploited by magnetic resonance imaging.