[Apoptosis induced by bleomycin: influence of cellular models]

Bleomycins are a family of glycopeptides isolated from streptomyces verticillus and exhibiting antibiotic properties. They are commonly included in chemotherapy regimens used to treat patients with Hodgkin's or non Hodgkin's malignant lymphoma, squamous-cell carcinoma or germ-cell tumor. The chemical structure and action mode of bleomycin have been extensively studied, in contrast, the molecular mechanisms of the cytotoxic effects of bleomycin, in vivo, remain poorly understood. Recently, the apoptotics signaling pathway induce by bleomycin was the object of study, of many groups. In this sense, some studies suggested that bleomycin induce in some cells different apoptotic pathway in dose and time depending manner. The sensibility or the resistance to apoptosis induced by bleomycin may explain the sensibility or the resistance of tumor cells to bleomycin. The aim of this review was to describe the machinery of apoptosis induced by bleomycin in tumor cells.