Vitamin E in Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML) Prevention

Abstract

The resistance to inhibitors of tyrosine kinase necessitates novel approaches to the therapy of chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). The progression of CML to blast crisis is associated with down-regulation of C/EBP-alpha being involved in the differentiation block in leukemic blast cells. Moreover, lowered C/EBP-alpha expression correlates with resistance to imatinib in CML. We have demonstrated that vitamin E up-regulates expression of C/EBP-alpha and down-regulates expression of Snail transcription factor in K562 cells in vitro contributing to the putative recovery of myeloid differentiation potential. In parallel with increased CEBP alpha expression, Vitamin E treatment results in the decreasing expression of placental-like alkaline phosphatase and increasing expression of tissue non-specific alkaline phosphatase. We suggest that vitamin E could be used as the plausible biological modulator to prevent the progression to blast crisis and to overcome drug resistance of leukemic cells in CML.