Revisiting bleomycin from pathophysiology to safe clinical use

• Published in: Critical reviews in oncology/hematology Vol. 87; no. 1; pp. 90 - 100
• Main Authors: Froudarakis, Marios, Hatzimichael, Eleftheria, Kyriazopoulou, Lydia, Lagos, Konstantinos, Pappas, Periklis, Tzakos, Andreas G, Karavasilis, Vasilis, Daliani, Danai, Papandreou, Christos, Briasoulis, Evangelos
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Netherlands Elsevier Ireland Ltd 01-07-2013
• Subjects: Antibiotics, Antineoplastic - adverse effects; Antibiotics, Antineoplastic - pharmacology; Antibiotics, Antineoplastic - therapeutic use; Bleomycin; Bleomycin - adverse effects; Bleomycin - pharmacology; Bleomycin - therapeutic use; Hematology, Oncology and Palliative Medicine; Hodgkin's Lymphoma; Humans; Incidence; Lung injury; Lung Injury - chemically induced; Lung Injury - diagnosis; Lung Injury - epidemiology; Lung Injury - physiopathology; Lung Injury - therapy; Practice Guidelines as Topic; Risk Factors; Safe clinical use; Testicular germ-cell tumour; Therapeutics; Toxicity; Bleomycin; Toxicity; Therapeutics; Hodgkin's Lymphoma; Testicular germ-cell tumour; Safe clinical use; Lung injury
• ISSN: 1040-8428; 1879-0461
• DOI: 10.1016/j.critrevonc.2012.12.003

Abstract Bleomycin is a key component of curative chemotherapy regimens employed in the treatment of curable cancers, such as Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) and testicular germ-cell tumours (GCT), yet its use may cause bleomycin-induced lung injury (BILI), which is associated with significant morbidity and a mortality rate of 1–3%. Diagnosis of BILI is one of exclusion and physicians involved in the care of HL and GCT patients should be alerted. Pharmacogenomic studies could contribute towards the identification of molecular predictors of bleomycin toxicity on the aim to optimize individual use of bleomycin. We review all existing data on bleomycin's most recent integrated chemical biology, molecular pharmacology and mature clinical data and provide guidelines for its safe clinical use.