Cellular and biophysical evidence for interactions between adenosine triphosphate and P-glycoprotein substrates: functional implications for adenosine triphosphate/drug cotransport in P-glycoprotein overexpressing tumor cells and in P-glycoprotein low-level expressing erythrocytes.

P-glycoprotein is involved with the removal of drugs, most of them cations, from the plasma membrane and cytoplasm. Pgp is also associated with movement of ATP, an anion, from the cytoplasm to the extracellular space. The central question of this study is whether drug and ATP transport associated with the expression of Pgp are in any way coupled. We have measured the stoichiometry of transport coupling between drug and ATP release. The drug and ATP transport that is inhibitable by the sulfonylurea compound, glyburide (P. E. Golstein, A. Boom, J. van Geffel, P. Jacobs, B. Masereel, and R. Beauwens, Pfluger's Arch. 437, 652, 1999), permits determination of the transport coupling ratio, which is close to 1:1. In view of this result, we asked whether ATP interacts directly with Pgp substrates. We show by measuring the movement of Pgp substrates in electric fields that ATP and drug movement are coupled. The results are compatible with the view that substrates for Pgp efflux are driven by the movement of ATP through electrostatic interaction and effective ATP-drug complex formation with net anionic character. This mechanism not only pertains to drug efflux from tumor cells overexpressing Pgp, but also provides a framework for understanding the role of erythrocytes in drug resistance. The erythrocyte consists of a membrane surrounding a millimolar pool of ATP. Mammalian RBCs have no nucleus or DNA drug/toxin targets. From the perspective of drug/ATP complex formation, the RBC serves as an important electrochemical sink for toxins. The presence in the erythrocyte membrane of approximately 100 Pgp copies per RBC provides a mechanism for eventual toxin clearance. The RBC transport of toxins permits their removal from sensitive structures and ultimate clearance from the organism via the liver and/or kidneys.

Multistable collision cycles of Manakov spatial solitons.

We show numerically, using known state-change relations, that collision cycles of Manakov (1+1)-dimensional spatial solitons can exhibit multistable polarization states.

Time-gated Manakov spatial solitons are computationally universal.

We prove that time-gated Manakov (1+1)-dimensional spatial solitons can perform arbitrary computation in a homogeneous medium with beams entering only at one boundary.

Information transfer via cascaded collisions of vector solitons.

We demonstrate experimentally the transport of information from one vector (Manakov-like) spatial soliton to another via collisions with a third, intermediate soliton.

Benzquinamide inhibits P-glycoprotein mediated drug efflux and potentiates anticancer agent cytotoxicity in multidrug resistant cells.

We have previously shown that efflux of cytotoxic drugs from multidrug resistant (MDR) cell lines can be quantitated at the single cell level using a sensitive fluorescence microscopy technique. Based on the structure of compounds which inhibited the efflux of Rhodamine-123 (Rho-123) using this methodology, we hypothesized that the antiemetic, antihistaminic agent benzquinamide (BZQ) would interfere with P-glycoprotein (P-gp) mediated drug transport and potentiate the effects of anticancer agents in MDR cell lines. We show that BZQ interferes with P-gp mediated drug efflux and increases drug accumulation in MDR cells using Rho-123 as a fluorescent probe. BZQ increases the cytotoxicity of chemotherapeutic agents to both human and hamster MDR cell lines in vitro. A slight increase in cytotoxicity to chemotherapeutic agents is also observed in the parental cell lines with BZQ. BZQ increases [3H]daunorubicin accumulation and inhibits the binding of [125I]iodoaryl azidoprazosin to the P-gp in MDR cells. BZQ is a new agent to increase the cytotoxic effects of anticancer agents in MDR cells and may ultimately prove useful as an adjunct in cancer chemotherapy.

Operations on images using quad trees.

A quad tree for representing a picture is a tree in which successively deeper levels represent successively finer subdivisions of picture area. An algorithm is given for superposing N quad trees in time proportional to the total number of nodes in the trees. Warnock-type algorithms are then presented for building the quad tree for the picture of the boundary of a polygon, and for coloring the interior of such a polygon. These algorithms take O(v + p + q) time, where v is the number of polygon vertices, p is the polygon perimeter, and q is a resolution parameter. When the resolution q is fixed, these algorithms are asymptotically optimal.