Combined treatments with vitamin A and 5-fluorouracil and the growth of allotransplantable and syngeneic tumors in mice.

The combined effect of retinol palmitate (RP) and 5-fluorouracil (FUra) was examined with the use of allotransplantable and syngeneic murine tumor systems. The ip combined administration of RP (5,000 IU/kg/day) and FUra (5 mg/kg/day, 20 mg/kg/day, or 20 mg/kg/every 3d day) suppressed the tumor growth in ICR/JCL mice given sc inoculations of 5 X 10(6) allotransplantable sarcoma 180 cells and prolonged the survival time of mice inoculated ip with 10(7) tumor cells, as compared with the survival time of mice given the single administration of either RP or FUra. Similar results were obtained when BALB/c mice were inoculated sc with a syngeneic BALB/c Meth A fibrosarcoma and treated with RP (5,000 IU/kg/day) and FUra (20 mg/kg/every 3d day). The growth of Meth A implanted on day 10, as a rechallenge, was significantly suppressed in the group pretreated with RP alone or both RP and FUra for 9 days from day 1. The growth of Meth 1, another syngeneic tumor of BALB/c origin, inoculated on day 10 as a rechallenge tumor was unaffected by the treatment with RP and/or FUra. An immune response to tumor-specific antigens seemed to be involved in the combined effects of these two drugs.