bcr-abl

In any case, what he found was that treating two different leukemia and lymphoma cell lines with ascorbate at those concentrations before treating them with chemotherapeutic agents, including mechanistically dissimilar agents such as doxorubicin, which intercalates with DNA and causes DNA breaks; methotrexate, which inhibits folate metabolism; cisplatin, which crosslinks DNA; vincristine, which interferes with microtubule function; and imatinib mesylate (better known by its trade name of Gleevec), a selective inhibitor of the activity of a protein called bcr-abl, which is the oncogene that plays a central role in the development of chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML).

Adrian Monck 2008