Transcriptional activation and cell cycle block are the keys for 5-fluorouracil induced up-regulation of human thymidylate synthase expression

5-fluorouracil, a commonly used chemotherapeutic agent, up-regulates expression of human thymidylate synthase (hTS). Several different regulatory mechanisms have been proposed to mediate this up-regulation in distinct cell lines, but their specific contributions in a single cell line have not been investigated to date. We have established the relative contributions of these previously proposed regulatory mechanisms in the ovarian cancer cell line 2008 and the corresponding cisplatin-resistant and 5-FU cross-resistant-subline C13*.