The effect of adenosine triphosphate on oral mucosity in rats due to sunitinib administration

Sunitinib, a common drug used in cancer treatment, is a multi-targeted tyrosine kinase in-hibitor. It is argued that sunitinib-associated oral mucositis is caused by VEGF inhibition. Previous research has documented that ATP allows for wound healing through an increase in VEGF levels and pro-vides an antioxidant effect. The aim of our study was to biochemically analyze whether adenosine triphos-phate (ATP) offers any protective effects against potential oral oxidative mucosal damage due to sunitinib use in male albino Wistar rats. ATP was injected ip at 25 mg/kg dose to sunitinib + ATP(SAT) (n=8) group. Normal saline (0.9% NaCl) was applied in the same route to the sunitinib-alone(SUN) (n=8) and healthy (HG) (n=8) groups as the solvent. One hour after ATP and 0.9% NaCl were administered, oral de-livery of 25 mg/kg sunitinib was given to the SAT and SUN groups, once a day for four weeks. While MDA, TOS and 8-OHdG levels were significantly higher (p < 0.001) compared to the healthy and ATP group in the oral cavity tissues of subjects treated with sunitinib, tGSH and TAS were significantly lower (p < 0.001). Our experimental results show that ATP protects tongue and cheek tissues of rats from oxida-tive damage of sunitinib, indicating that ATP may be beneficial for sunitinib-related oral mucosal injury. © 2021, Colegio de Farmaceuticos de la Provincia de Buenos Aires. All rights reserved.