Improved Survival of Leukemic Mice Treated with Sodium Caseinate in Combination with Daunorubicin without Toxicity

In recent years, low doses of chemotherapy have been resumed and explored for the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia. Thus, CPX-351, a dual-drug liposomal encapsulation of cytarabine and daunorubicin, was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, to deliver a synergistic 5 : 1 molar drug ratio into leukemia cells to a greater extent than normal bone marrow cells and significantly enhance survival compared with conventional treatment in older and newly diagnosed AML patients, but overall survival rate remains low; therefore, the need for new therapeutic options continues. Sodium caseinate (SC), a salt of casein, the main milk protein, has cytotoxic effect in leukemia cell lines, but promotes proliferation of hematopoietic normal cells, while its administration in leukemic mice promotes survival for more than 40 days, but bone marrow surviving mice still harbour leukemic cells, but it is not known whether the combination with cytarabine or daunorubicin can improve survival without damaging normal hematopoietic cells. Here, it is shown that, in vitro, the combination of the IC₂₅ of SC-cytarabine or SC-daunorubicin synergizes in the elimination of leukemic cells, with evident induction of apoptosis, while the proliferation of mononuclear cells of bone marrow is not affected. In leukemic mice, the combined administration of SC-daunorubicin or SC-cytarabine promotes the highest survival rate at 40 days; in addition, no autoproliferating cells were detected in the bone marrow of survivors of more than 60 days, evidence of eradication of leukemic cells, but only the bone marrow of mice treated with the SC-daunorubicin combination proliferated in the presence of interleukin-3, which shows that this combination is not toxic to normal bone marrow cells, thus emerging as a possible antileukemic agent.