Abstract
Bleomycin is an anti-cancer drug used to treat different malignancies, mainly lymphomas, germ cell tumors. Unfortunately, bleomycin has major, pulmonary toxicity that affects 20% of treated individuals with pulmonary fibrosis being the most devastating form. Deglyco-bleomycin is a molecule derived from bleomycin in which the sugar residue D-mannosyl-L-glucose disaccharide has been deleted. The objective of this study is to assess the anti-cancerous activity and the lung toxicity of deglyco-bleomycin.We compared in vivo the antitumor activity in three rodent models after intraperitoneal administrated deglyco-bleomycin and bleomycin. Pulmonary toxicity was in depth examined after intratracheal administration of both chemotherapeutic agents.We demonstrate in vivo in rodent cancer models, including a human Hodgkin lymphoma xenograft and a syngeneic melanoma model, that intra-peritoneal deglyco-bleomycin is as effective as bleomycin...