Approaches to more effective induction of cytodifferentiation of transformed cells and potential for cancer treatment.

Conceptually, the use of cytodifferentiation agents to suppress oncogenicity may prove most effective in long-term continuous treatment of patients whose tumors display some inherent expression of differentiated characteristics. This is the case in many pre-malignant lesions. The difficulty in evaluating the therapeutic role for HMBA is often times in separating in vivo cytotoxic from cytodifferentiation effects. Only with further studies will it be determined whether these and other cytodifferentiation agents are therapeutically useful and whether study of the mechanism faction of these agents provides additional understanding of the processes of cellular transformation and differentiation with which they interact.