Possible Interaction: Cytarabine and Tretinoin

“ All-trans retinoic acid (ATRA) has shown a synergistic activity in combination with cytosine arabinoside in vitro in the treatment of acute myeloid leukaemia (AML).”

“Combining ATRA with cytarabine had a synergistic antileukemic effect in MLL-AF9-positive cells in vitro.”

“Treatment with all‐trans retinoic acid (ATRA) reduced Bcl‐2 and Bcl‐XL expression in the leukaemic Q cells, and enhanced their chemosensitivity to cytosine arabinoside (ara‐C).”

“ ATRA combined with low-dose Ara-C could be an alternative treatment for this kind of patient.”

“The combined use of ATRA and ARA-C seemed to have only an additive effect while the sequential use did not show any advantage.”

“In conclusion, the present results suggest a potential role for the combination of RA and cytarabine in the treatment of refractory and/or relapsed AML patients with CD34+CD7- but not CD34+CD7+ blast cells.”

“The addition of RA to cytarabine enhanced its induced reduction of Bcl-2 in KG1 CD34+CD7- but not in KGla CD34+CD7+ human myeloid leukaemia cells.”

“Downregulation of Bcl-2 mRNA and … by ATRA and the combination of Ara-C, … ATRA , resulted in markedly increased cytotoxicity in HL-60 cells, as compared to Ara-C alone or ATRA … Ara-C. Implications of these findings for the development of new therapeutic strategies for AML are discussed.”

“In addition, the finding that liposomally delivered retinoids increase the capacity of cytosine arabinoside to induce erythroid differentiation, could be of interest in studies aimed at the development of treatment able to reactivate fetal globin genes in β‐thalassemia patients.”

“HU, ATRA , tyrphostin A48 and NDGA augmented apoptosis induced by ara-C as assessed by all three indicators.”

“The ribonucleotide reductase inhibitors hydroxyurea (HU), arabinosyl-2-fluoroadenine (F-Ara-A) and 2-chlorodeoxyadenosine (2-CdA) and the antisignalling drugs all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA), staurosporine and quercetin have been reported to enhance the cytotoxicity of 1-beta-D-arabinofuranosylcytosine (ara-C).”

“In addition, our data demonstrate that erythroid differentiation of K562 occurs when 40 μmol/l of retinoic acid or retinol are added together with 75 nmol/l cytosine arabinoside.”