Troglitazone overcomes doxorubicin-resistance in resistant K562 leukemia cells.

Human myeloid leukemia cells become resistant to doxorubicin (DOX) treatment and this resistance is correlated with an increased glyoxalase 1 (GLO1) expression. Troglitazone (TRG) is an anti-diabetic thiazolidinedione drug previously used to treat insulin-resistance in Type 2 diabetes. We previously showed that TRG down regulates GLO1 gene expression in a number of cell types and reasoned that TRG might be a useful adjunct therapy to overcome DOX resistance. Here we show that TRG treatment overcomes the resistance to DOX in the DOX-resistant K562 human leukemia cells. Higher doses of TRG were found to alter histone H3:H2B ratios with a decreased ratio in DOX-sensitive and increased ratio in DOX-resistant lines. Furthermore, phosphorylated H3 was seen in DOX-resistant but not in DOX-sensitive cells. We conclude that the downstream effect of TRG in DOX-resistant cells may be interference with normal cell cycle events leading to genomic instability. Our data suggest that TRG may be a useful adjunct therapy in circumventing drug resistance in K562 leukemia cells.