Trichostatin D, a new inducer of phenotypic reversion in transformed cells.

Various oncogenes correlate with tumor phenotypes, which represent transformed morphology, loss of contact inhibition, colony formation in soft agar and tumorigenicity in nude mice. Thus, inducers of phenotypic reversion in oncogene-transformed cells mayact as selective antitumor agents without cytotoxicity. Our screening for such substances resulted in the isolation of trichostatin D (Fig. 1), a new member of the trichostatin family12), from an actinomycete identified as Streptomyces violaceusniger. This compound induced flat reversion in NIH3T3murine fibroblasts transformed with human papillomavirus oncogenes (NIH3T3/T-601)3). We report here the