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Trichostatin A enhances the response of chemotherapeutic agents in inhibiting pancreatic cancer cell proliferation

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Abstract

Pancreatic cancer is an aggressive neoplasia, and standard chemotherapies are by and large ineffective. The purpose of this work was to get a comprehensive preclinical study on the ability of anticancer drug combinations that best inhibit growth of pancreatic adenocarcinoma cells. We evaluated the in vitro growth inhibition of ten pancreatic cancer cell lines to gemcitabine and 5-fluorouracil, newer generation cytotoxic agents (oxaliplatin, irinotecan), targeted therapy (gefitinib) and a histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor (trichostatin A). Cells were treated with the single drug alone and all pairwise drug association. Our results demonstrate that TSA can effectively increase the drug sensitivity of all the cell lines studied. The association of TSA and irinotecan determines an increase in growth inhibition on the highest percentage of cell lines (80%). Our findings may represent an experimental basis for potential clinical application of HDAC inhibitors, in particular in association with drugs used in cancer clinical treatment, supporting the idea that HDAC inhibitors could act as sensitizers for chemotherapy.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Dr. E. Pinton and Dr. A. Sbarufatti (Aventis and Sanofi-Synthelabo) for providing irinotecan and oxaliplatin. This study was supported by Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Verona (Bando 2004); Fondazione Giorgio Zanotto, Verona, Italy; Associazione Italiana Ricerca sul Cancro, Milan, Italy; and the Italian Ministry of University and Research. Authors Paolo Piacentini and Massimo Donadelli have equally contributed to this paper.

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Correspondence to Marta Palmieri.

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Piacentini, P., Donadelli, M., Costanzo, C. et al. Trichostatin A enhances the response of chemotherapeutic agents in inhibiting pancreatic cancer cell proliferation. Virchows Arch 448, 797–804 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00428-006-0173-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00428-006-0173-x

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