EN
Oxidative DNA damage and DNA repair may mediate several cellular processes, like replication and transcription, mutagenesis and apoptosis and thus may be important for the organism development as well as its pathogenesis, including cancer. Activity of DNA repair enzymes can depend on many factors, such as gene polymorphism, mRNA and protein level, as well as enzymes activation and inhibition. Modulation of base excision repair pathway eliminating from DNA oxidatively formed lesions may be caused by the diet, inflammation and neoplastic transformation. Reactive oxygen species and some diet components induce transcription of several Base Excision Repair enzymes, e.g. major human AP-endonuclease, (APE1) and 8-oxoG-DNA glycosylase (OGG1). The carcinogenic process in human lungs decreases repair activity for 8-oxoG in transcription independent manner, but increases repair activity of eA and eC, as measured in tumors and unchanged lung tissues of lung cancer patients. Thus, modulation of repair enzymes activities may be a cell response on their way to differentiation or neoplastic transformation.