Abstract

Base excision repair (BER) is the main pathway for repair of endogenous DNA damage. It was expected that different tumor types could derive from BER defects but to date this link is elusive. In vitro and molecular epidemiology studies may be used to unravel this issue.

Keywords: DNA base excision repair, molecular epidemiology, oxidative DNA damage, 8-oxoguanine, glycosylase, mutation, in vitro neoplastic transformation, chemotherapy