Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is the most common childhood cancer. Although its prognosis continually improves with time, a significant proportion of patients still relapse from disease because leukemia’s resistance to therapy. Methotrexate (MTX), folic-acid antagonist, chemotherapy agent commonly used against ALL and as an immune-system suppressant for rheumatoid arthritis that presents m...

Umbelliprenin is a prenylated compound, which belongs to the class of sesquiterpene coumarins. It is extracted from dried roots of Ferula szwitsiana collected from the mountains of Golestan forest (Golestan Province, north of Iran). Induction of apoptosis in Jurkat T-CLL cells has been previously shown. In this study, effect of umbelliprenin on proapoptotic caspases (caspase-8 and -9) and antia...

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) with mixed lineage leukemia (MLL) gene rearrangements (MLL+ALL) has a dismal prognosis and is characterized by high surface CD44 expression. Known that CD44 has the specific binding sites for a natural ligand hyaluronan (HA), we investigated biological effects of HA with different molecular sizes on MLL+ALL cell lines, and found that the addition of ultra-low-...

Background and Aims: Benzopyrones are a group of compounds including coumarins and chromenes. Chromenes have a heterocyclic structure with gamma benzopyran which has anticancer activities. In this investigation we studied the effect of 4 new derivatives of chromene compounds on the human acute lymphoblastic leukemia cell line MOLT4. Materials and Methods: The structure of the new compound was ...

Introduction T-cell lymphoblastic lymphoma (T-LBL) is a widely disseminated disease worldwide. Triptolide (TPL) is purified from Chinese herb and displays anti-inflammatory, anti-fertility, anti-tumor and immunosuppressive effects. Materials and methods Here, in vitro and in vivo experiments were conducted to investigate the anti-tumor effect of TPL treatment in T-LBL and the potential mechan...

Despite advances in the treatment of T‑cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T‑ALL), the outcome of T‑ALL treatment remains unsatisfactory, therefore, more effective treatment is urgently required. The present study examined the cytotoxicities of bortezomib in combination with daunorubicin against human Jurkat and Molt‑4 T‑ALL cells and primary T‑ALL cells. Compared with treatment alone, co‑exposu...

Background: Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), a hematological malignancy, is associated with the accumulation of lymphoblasts in hematopoietic tissues and peripheral blood (PB). A major obstacle ALL treatment failure to undergo apoptosis, thus resulting relapses. Cyclophosphamide an alkylating agent widely used treat various cancers. BV6 another agent, under preclinical clinical trials, which...

Background: Promyelocytic leukemia protein (PML) is a tumor suppressor protein that is involved in myeloid cell differentiation in response to retinoic acid (RA). In addition, RA acts as a natural morphogen in neural development. Objectives: This study aimed to examine PML gene expression in different stages of in vitro neural differentiation of NT2 cells, and to investigate the possible role o...

A balance between survival and apoptotic signals regulates B cell development. These signals are tightly regulated by a host of molecules, including IL-7. Abnormal signaling events may lead to neoplastic transformation of progenitor B cells. Signal transduction inhibitors potentially may modulate these abnormal signals. Inhibitors of the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) such as rapamycin ha...

Reduction in minimal residual disease, measured by real-time quantitative PCR or flow cytometry, predicts prognosis in childhood B-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia. We explored whether cells reported as minimal residual disease by flow cytometry represent the malignant clone harboring clone-specific genomic markers (53 follow-up bone marrow samples from 28 children with B-cell precur...