The major human apurinic and apyrimidinic (AP) endonuclease 1 Ape1 (also known as Redox factor 1 [Ref-1]), which is homologous to Escherichia coli exonuclease III, plays a key role in both short-patch and long-patch base excision repair (20,40). It cleaves the AP sites in DNA and allows them to be repaired by other enzymes involved in base excision repair (16,23,24). The AP sites can be formed by chemical hydrolysis, the oxygen metabolism, ionizing radiation, UV irradiation, alkylating agents, or oxidizing agents (16,53). In addition, AP sites can also arise spontaneously, where it has been estimated that 20,000 purine samples and 500 pyrimidines are lost in each 24-h cell cycle in human cells (52). The presence of AP sites blocks DNA replication, leading to DNA breakage, mutagenicity, and cytotoxicity. Ape1/Ref-1 contributes to more than 95% of the total cellular AP site-specific activity (12), which is consistent with Ape1/Ref-1 being essential for maintaining the genomic stability. (32,35,73). Studies have reported elevated Ape1/Ref-1 levels or altered subcellular localization in various types of cancers, such as epithelial ovarian cancers, cervical cancers, prostate cell tumors, melanoma, gliomas, rhabdomyosarcoma, and germ cell tumors, which are associated with tumor resistance and progression (7,21,22,43,74,99,100). Ape1/Ref-1 is highly expressed in selected regions of the central nervous system (68,95). A reduction in Ape1/ Ref-1 expression occurs in the hippocampus after hypoxicischemic injury (93), in the cortex after compression injury (49), and in the spinal cord after ischemia (76). In addition,