Apoptosis as a mechanism for the treatment of adult T cell leukemia: promising drugs from benchside to bedside.

Human T cell lymphotropic virus-1 (HTLV-1) is the causative agent of adult T cell leukemia (ATL), an aggressive malignancy of mature activated T cells. Although many therapeutic strategies are available, none are effective and most patients experience recurrence of the disease. Over the past decade, many drugs have been discovered that showed promising therapeutic potential against ATL but which remain in the preclinical testing phase. Mechanistically, these drugs either induce apoptosis or regulate cellular proliferation in ATL cells. Here, we provide a summary of these promising drugs that target ATL, with a focus on their mechanism of anticancer activity, to offer insights into the use of multiple drugs with different targets for enhancing ATL eradication.