Fundamentals of chemo-differentiation therapy of myeloid leukemia.

It has been shown recently that various myeloid leukemia cells can be induced by numerous compounds to differentiate terminally into non-growing mature cells. Furthermore, some of these compounds have been found to be clinically useful for the therapy of certain types of myeloid leukemia. To improve this new method of differentiation therapy of leukemia, we have studied on basic issues of such differentiation therapy including 1) development of more effective new inducers of differentiation of leukemia cells, 2) isolation and characterization of cytokines regulating growth and differentiation of leukemia cells, and 3) rationale for chemo-differentiation therapy of leukemia which is a combination chemotherapy of leukemia with differentiation inducers and cytotoxic anticancer drugs. In this article, recent results of our studies on these basic issues on differentiation therapy of leukemia are reviewed.