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Induction of apoptosis in childhood acute leukemia by chemotherapeutic agents: Failure to detect evidence of apoptosis in vivo
Author(s) -
Matsubara K.,
Kubota M.,
Adachi S.,
Kuwakado K.,
Hirota H.,
Wakazono Y.,
Akiyama Y.,
Mikawa H.
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
european journal of haematology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.904
H-Index - 84
eISSN - 1600-0609
pISSN - 0902-4441
DOI - 10.1111/j.1600-0609.1994.tb01284.x
Subject(s) - apoptosis , in vivo , etoposide , dna fragmentation , leukemia , in vitro , medicine , acute myeloblastic leukemia , fragmentation (computing) , acute leukemia , prednisolone , immunology , cancer research , chemotherapy , programmed cell death , biology , biochemistry , ecology , microbiology and biotechnology
This study is designed to investigate whether apoptosis occurs in vivo in pediatric patients with acute leukemia during induction therapy. When patients with common acute lymphoblastic leukemia (cALL) and acute myeloblastic leukemia (AML) were treated with prednisolone (60 mg/m 2 /day, p.o. or i.v.) and etoposide (150 mg/m 2 /day, i.v.), respectively, the blast cell counts fell to below 30% and 5%, respectively, in 1 week. However, during this cytoreduction phase, neither morphologically apoptotic cells nor fragmentation of DNA derived from peripheral blast cells were detected at any preparations. On the other hand, cALL but not AML cells spontaneously undergo apoptosis following their culture in vitro. The addition of autologous serum instead of fetal calf serum substantially prevented apoptosis from occurring spontaneously in cALL cells. When cALL and AML cells freshly obtained from patients before therapy were treated in vitro with 10 μmol/1 prednisolone and 20 μg/ml etoposide, respectively, these cells underwent apoptosis within 6 hours, as determined by a morphological and DNA fragmentation assay. These in vivo and in vitro findings suggest that, although anticancer drugs may induce apoptosis in vivo , these apoptotic cells cannot be detected due to their rapid removal from the circulation.