Combination therapy: histone deacetylase inhibitors and platinum-based chemotherapeutics for cancer

Abstract

One of the most promising strategies to increase the efficacy of standard chemotherapy drugs is by combining them with low doses of histone deacetylases inhibitors (HDACis). Regarded as chemosensitizers, the addition of well-tolerated doses of HDACis to platinum-based chemotherapeutics has been proven in vitro and in vivo in recent studies for many cancer types and stages. In this review, we discuss the most commonly used combinations of histone deacetylase inhibitors and platinum based drugs in the context of their possible mechanisms, efficiency, efficacy, and related drawbacks in preclinical and clinical studies.