Study of erythroid differentiation of K 562 cells resistant to adriamycin]

The induction of differentiation is at present one of the most promising pathway used in the field of cancer chemotherapy. As part of this research, the study of the human K562 erythroleukemic cells differentiation has shown that these cells are potent to synthesize hemoglobin when treated by 40 nmoles/l of adriamycin, 30 nmoles/l of aclacinomycin or 3.10(4) nmoles/l of hemin. This functional differentiation is accompanied by some changes in three membrane antigens expression: GPA, CD15 antigen and TfR. To complete these result, we have studied the differentiation of resistant K562 cells to adriamycin by these three inducers. Our results suggest that this cell population is able to synthesize hemoglobin after its exposition to 2.10(3) nmoles/l of adriamycin, 100 nmoles/l of aclacinomycin or 7, 5.10(4) nmoles/l of hemin. In contrary to aclacinomycin and adriamycin, hemin did not affect the three markers expression. On the other hand, only the induction by adriamycin causes membrane phenotypical changes which are erythroid differentiation specific.