Differential effects of estrogen, tamoxifen and the pure antiestrogen ICI 182,780 in human drug-resistant leukemia cell lines

ICI 182,780, a potent, new steroidal antiestrogen without apparent agonist activity, appears to be a potent modulator of the classic multidrug resistance (MDR) phenotype in the CEM/A7, CEM/VLB₁₀₀ and K562/VIN100 MDR cell lines. This reagent had no effect on the respective parental CCRF-CEM and K562 cell lines. The use of 1.25 μM ICI 182,780 resulted in a 6- to 7-fold decrease in doxorubicin resistance in the CEM/A7 and CEM/VLB₁₀₀ cell lines. A dose-response effect was observed at ICI 182,780 concentrations of up to 5 μM. As compared with tamoxifen (TAM), ICI 182,780 was 2 and 4 times more effective in the K562/VIN100 and CEM/A7 cell lines, respectively. ICI 182,780 at 0.625 μM increased [³H]-daunomycin uptake (P<0.0001) as effectively as 5 μM TAM in the resistant CEM/A7 line. Drug-efflux studies showed that 5 μM ICI 182,780 significantly decreased drug efflux as compared with 5 μM TAM (P<0.0001). Estradiol (EST) at 10 μM increased doxorubicin resistance by 1.2-1.3 times in the CEM/A7 and CEM/VLB₁₀₀ cell lines and significantly decreased drug accumulation (P=0.002) and retention (P<0.001) in the CEM/A7 cell line. However, the addition of 10 μM EST to 1-2 μM ICI 182,780 did not inhibit the ability of ICI 182,780 to modulate doxorubicin resistance in the two resistant cell lines. Using reverse-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) to measure lipophilicity, we found no apparent association between the ability of ICI 182,780, TAM or EST to modulate resistance and their relative hydrophobicity.