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Adenosine deaminase is an enzyme that breaks down adenosine and deoxyadenosine; blocking it with pentostatin poisons lymphocytes, which is why the drug works in hairy cell leukaemia and some T-cell cancers. This dossier gathers the 1 product (1 approved), 3 trials, 0 pathways and 0 resistance routes in the corpus that involve it, with external identifiers so it can be joined to UniProt, ChEMBL, Open Targets and the rest of biology.
ADA is a zinc-dependent hydrolase expressed in most tissues and at high levels in lymphoid cells. Inhibiting it raises intracellular deoxyadenosine triphosphate, which blocks ribonucleotide reductase and DNA synthesis and triggers apoptosis, an effect most marked in lymphocytes with high deoxynucleoside kinase activity. Pentostatin binds the enzyme almost irreversibly; cladribine, the other purine analogue used in hairy cell leukaemia, is instead a substrate-resistant deoxyadenosine analogue.
| Cancer | Prevalence | Measure | Note | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Metastatic cancer | all% | Housekeeping enzyme present in every dividing cell (purine breakdown, highest in lymphocytes); not a selection marker, which is why these drugs are given by cancer type rather than by test. |
Approximate, population-level figures; the measure column says what was counted. Ranges show the midpoint as a bar.
| Modality | Approved |
|---|---|
| Small molecule 1 |
| Trial | Setting | Result | Products | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | Completed | A Prospective, Randomized, Open Label, Phase III Trial of Fludarabine, Cyclophosphamide, and Rituximab vs. Pentostatin, Cyclophosphamide, and Rituximab in Previously Untreated or Treated B-cell Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia | - | ||
| 3 | Completed | Methotrexate or Pentostatin for Graft-versus-host Disease Prophylaxis in Risk-adapted Allogeneic Bone Marrow Transplantation for Hematologic Malignancies | - | ||
| 2 | Active | Randomized Phase II Trial of Rituximab With Either Pentostatin or Bendamustine for Multiply Relapsed or Refractory Hairy Cell Leukemia | - |
No recorded escape route names this target.
No pathway diagram carries this target as a node.
No companion diagnostic in the registry measures this target.
No model entry for this target yet; check the cancer entries on the models page.
No open questions recorded for this target yet. Suggest one.
Query for this target: (TITLE:"Adenosine deaminase" OR ABSTRACT:"Adenosine deaminase" OR TITLE:"ADA" OR ABSTRACT:"ADA") AND (cancer OR tumor OR tumour OR oncology OR carcinoma OR lymphoma OR leukemia OR leukaemia OR myeloma OR sarcoma OR melanoma OR glioma). Results are unfiltered search hits about Adenosine deaminase (ADA), not a curated reading list.
The dossier as machine-readable JSON, at /api/v1/dossiers/ada.json: identifiers from HGNC, Ensembl, UniProt and ChEMBL, products with status, trials, pathways, hotspots, open questions and assays. The full entity record is in the open API at /api/v1/entities/ada.json. Licence CC BY-NC 4.0.