“…Human NQO1 in the presence of its cofactor, NADPH, reductively activates 3-NBA to the reactive intermediate N -hydroxy-3-aminobenzanthrone ( N -OH-3-ABA) (see reaction step 2 in Figure 1) that dissociates to a ion that exhibits both nitrenium and carbenium character because the positive charge is delocalized to both nitrogen and carbon sites (step 3a in Figure 1), forming DNA adducts both in vitro and in vivo (Figure 1 and Figure 2; Table 1) [15,21,48,49,50,51,52,53]. N -OH-3-ABA can be further reduced to 3-aminobenzanthrone (3-ABA; step 4 in Figure 1) [14,51,52,54].…”