Preliminary studies on the distribution and fate of TEM, TEPA, and myleran in the human.

The clinical use of alkylating drugs represents an important contribution toward the chemotherapeutic management of certain forms of human cancer. Several recent reports summarize the palliative responses obtained with triethylenemelamine (TEM), triethylene phosphoramide (TEPA), and Myleran (Busulfan) in patients with malignant neoplasias of lymphatic or myelogenous origin (2, 3, 11, 12). The clinician is interested physicochemical methods for the analysis of these drugs or their probable metabolites are inadequate to detect such minute amounts as are present under pharmacologic experimentation in mammals. Therefore, radioisotopic tracer technics were employed in the present experiments. The molecular structures of the drugs studied and the type of the isotopic label employed are shown in Chart 1.