期刊名称:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN:0027-8424
电子版ISSN:1091-6490
出版年度:1977
卷号:74
期号:2
页码:587-591
DOI:10.1073/pnas.74.2.587
语种:English
出版社:The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要:Active folic acid degradation with the formation pterin-6-aldehyde is a previously undescribed characteristic of cancer cells in tissue culture. Neither normal adult epithelial and fibroblastic cells nor human amniotic cells nor mouse embryonic fibroblasts degrade folic acid to a measurable degree. Twenty-nine patients whose diagnoses were not revealed until after the test of their first morning urine for pterin-6-aldehyde was completed were studied for the presence or absence of pterin-6-aldehyde by thin-layer chromatography. Pterin-6-aldehyde was found in the urine at about 300 nmol/ml or greater only in those 13 patients with a tissue diagnosis of cancer. When the cancer was totally resected, the pterin-6-aldehyde was no longer found in the urine postoperatively. Pterin-6-aldehyde is not found in the urine of healthy patients at this level of detection unless their diets are supplemented with folic acid.