Acute leukemia is characterized by the accumulation of neoplastic cells in the bone marrow and peripheral blood. Currently, chemotherapy and differentiating agents have been used for the treatment of leukemia. Recently, plant extracts, either alone or in combination with chemo agents, have been proposed to be used for the treatment of cancers. The aim of the present research was to study the cy...

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients' outcome is usually poor, mainly because of drug resistance phenotype. The identification of new drugs able to overcome mechanisms of chemoresistance is essential. The pterocarpanquinone LQB-118 compound has been shown to have a potent cytotoxic activity in myeloid leukemia cell lines and patient cells. Our aim was to investigate if LQB-118 is able to targe...

The surface changes occurring in three acute myeloid leukemia cell lines (HL60, ML3, and KG1) induced to differentiate by a variety of agents (dimethylsulfoxide, retinoic acid, 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate, and factors present in lymphocyte conditioned medium) were probed using monoclonal antibodies that are differentiation stage- and lineage-specific. In all cases, the differentiated p...

Phospholipase A(2) plays a key role in phagocytic cell functions. By screening a synthetic hexapeptide combinatorial library, we identified 24 novel peptides based on their ability to stimulate arachidonic acid release associated with cytosolic phospholipase A(2) activity in differentiated HL60 cells. The identified peptides, that contain the consensus sequence (K/R/M)KYY(P/V/Y)M, also induce i...

Inositol phosphates (InsPs) and diacyglycerol (DAG) are second messengers derived via the breakdown of inositol phospholipids, and which play important signalling roles in the regulation of proliferation of some cell types. We have studied the operation of this pathway during the early stages of retionic acid (RA)-induced granulocytic differentiation of HL60 myeloid leukemia cells. The autonomo...

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) primarily produced via NADPH oxidase play an important role for killing microorganisms in neutrophils. In this study we examined if ROS production in Human promyelocytic leukemia cells (HL60) differentiated into neutrophil-like cells (dHL60) induces ER stress and activates the unfolded protein response (UPR). To cause ROS production cells were treated with PMA or b...

Smenospongine, a sesquiterpene aminoquinone isolated from the marine sponge Dactylospongia elegans, was previously reported by us to induce erythroid differentiation and G1 phase arrest of K562 chronic myelogenous leukemia cells. In this study, we investigated the effect of smenospongine on the cell cycles of other leukemia cells, including HL60 human acute promyelocytic leukemia cells and U937...

Molecular changes involved in cell differentiation are only partially known. Circulating inflammatory cells need to differentiate to perform specialized functions in target tissues. Here, we hypothesized that low-density lipoprotein receptor-related protein 5 (LRP5) is involved, through its participation in the canonical Wnt/β-catenin signalling, in the differentiation process of monocytic cell...

Momordica charantia (bitter gourd) has been used in the traditional system of medicine for the treatment of various diseases. Anticancer activity of M. charantia extracts has been demonstrated by numerous in vitro and in vivo studies. In the present study, we investigated the differentiation inducing potential of fractionated M. charantia seed extracts in human myeloid HL60 cells. We found that...

Valproic acid (VPA) and suberoylanilide hydroxamic acid (SAHA) are both HDAC inhibitors (HDACi). Previous studies indicated that both inhibitors show therapeutic effects on acute myeloid leukaemia (AML), while the differential impacts of the two different HDACi on AML treatment still remains elusive. In this study, using 3-plex SILAC based quantitative proteomics technique, anti-acetyllysine an...