Synthesis of isoxazole and isoxazoline derivatives of retinoids: effects on growth and differentiation of tumor cells

The authors studied the effects of several newly synthesized isoxazole and isoxazoline analogs of retinoids on induction of terminal differentiation and "in vitro" growth of tumor cell lines. Some of the tested compds. exhibit: (a) ability to induce adipogenic conversion of Ha-ras-1 transformed FH06T1-1 chinese hamster fibroblasts: (b) antiproliferative activity toward tumor cell lines, including the erythroleukemic K562 and FL cell lines and the FH06T1-1 cell line. This data could be of interest in identifying drugs of possible application in exptl. anticancer therapy.