Popis: |
Glucocorticoids are regularly employed in the therapeutic regimes of hematologic malignancies. In attempting to understand partially the therapeutic effect of these hormones, the in vitro cortisol-induced lysis of leukemic cells was studied. In previous studies [2], we have shown that the viability of malignant cells from chronic and acute myeloid leukemias was not affected by 20 h incubation with 10-5 M cortisol. Chronic lymphatic leukemic cells, however, were readily lysed by cortisol. The cells of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) patients were divided into two groups; those that were resistant to lysis and those that were sensitive. The purpose of the present study was to correlate sensitivity to cortisol-in-duced lysis to the phenotype of the ALL cells as defined by monoclonal antibodies and rosetting capacity. |