Leptin promotes the growth and viability of hematopoietic cells, and it also stimulates microvessel formation, indicating a role for leptin in angiogenesis. Acute myelocytic leukemia (AML) remains a disease with poor prognosis. Similar to solid tumors, it probably requires angiogenesis to ensure adequate supplies of nutrients. We studied rats with transplanted AML to test if a neutralizing anti...

Objective: Cuscuta campestris or common dodder is a holoparasitic  plant  that  has  been valorized for treatment of liver injury and cancer prevention in traditional medicine. Recently, extract of C. campestris had shown moderate antimicrobial properties and cytotoxic effects. In this study, we examined the level of cellular oxidants, cytotoxicity, apoptosis and differentiation induced by hydr...

An understanding of the cell interactions occurring in the leukemic microenvironment and their functional consequences for the different cell players has therapeutic relevance. By co-culturing mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) with the REH acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) cell line, we have established an in vitro leukemic niche for the functional evaluation of hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells (H...

The ability of acute myeloid leukemic (AML) blasts to differentiate into leukemic dendritic cells (DC) thus acquiring the potential to present known and unknown leukemic antigens efficiently, holds promise as a possible new treatment for AML patients with minimal residual disease. Recent advances in culture methods have made the clinical use of leukemic DC feasible. However, additional measures...

The electrophoretic mobilities of mononuclear white cells from the peripheral blood of normal subjects and leukemic patients were measured. Analysis of both fresh and cryopreserved samples of each type showed that cryopreservation had no distinguishable effect on the electrophoretic distribution of either normal or leukemic cells. Mode mobilities (mobilities at which maximum intensities are obs...

Acute leukemias are clonal disorders of hematopoiesis wherein a leukemic stem cell (LSC) acquires mutations that confer the capacity for unlimited self-renewal, impaired hematopoietic differentiation, and enhanced proliferation to the leukemic clone. Many recent advances in understanding the biology of leukemia have come from studies defining specific genetic and epigenetic abnormalities in leu...

background: leukemia is a malignant proliferative disorder of the hematopoietic cells. the important role of angiogenesis in leukemia has been reported by several studies. matrix metalloproteinases (mmps) are a large group of endopeptidases which degredate the extracellular matrix and play an important role in angiogenesis. objective: the present study was conducted to evaluate the patterns of ...

Drug resistance in myeloid leukemias may be mediated by an increased capacity to repair chemotherapy-induced DNA damage. Some tumor cell lines that are resistant to nitrosoureas contain the DNA repair protein O6-alkylguanine-DNA alkyltransferase (alkyltransferase). This protects cells by removing cytotoxic, nitrosourea-induced O6-alkylguanine adducts. We measured the level of alkyltransferase a...

Recently, low-molecular-weight B-cell growth factor (LMW-BCGF) has been reported to stimulate growth of leukemic cells from B-cell precursor-acute lymphoblastic leukemia (BCP-ALL). We further investigated the effects of LMW-BCGF on proliferation of leukemic clonogenic (progenitor) and nonclonogenic (progeny) cells from children with BCP-ALL (28 patients) and B-cell ALL (two patients). Patients ...

BACKGROUND The assessment of anticancer agents to treat leukemia needs to have animal models closer to the human pathology such as implantation in immunodeficient mice of leukemic cells from patient samples. A sensitive and early detection of tumor cells in these orthotopic models is a prerequisite for monitoring engraftment of leukemic cells and their dissemination in mice. Therefore, we devel...