Resveratrol is a polyphenol with many beneficial effects: not only as an
antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and antiatherogenic agent, as well as a platelet
aggregation inhibitor, but also as an antiproliferative and proapoptotic factor in various
types of cancers. There are reviews about the mechanisms responsible for its effects in
leukemia and lymphomas, emphasizing the chemosensitizing role of resveratrol, which
allows overcoming the multidrug resistance of cancers. The action of resveratrol occurs
preferentially on leukemic cells, and not on the normal ones. In addition, it is one of the
few drugs that act on leukemic stem cells. If experimental results are promising, its
application in humans encounters some difficulties. The paper presents the causes of its
low bioavailability, as well as recent patents that allow improvement of its bioavailability,
development of new extraction procedures, obtaining new formulae, and
associating resveratrol with other drugs in order to increase its effects. These patents
allow optimizing its effects in order to obtain an adjuvant agent for treatment of
oncohematological disorders.
Keywords: Antioxidant, apoptosis, cell cycle, cytochrome P450, glutation,
hormetic dose response, leukemia, lipoperoxidation, lymphoma, minimal residual
disease, mitochondrial superoxide, multidrug resistance, multiple myeloma,
nuclear factor kB, proliferation, reactive oxygen species, resveratrol, sirtuin, stem
cell, tyrosine kinase.
