Retinoids are defined as the compounds which elicit the specific
biological responses through binding or activating the specific receptor(s).
Retinoids modulate the cellular differentiation and proliferation in many types of cells. A series of retinoidal
benzoic acids, named retinobenzoic
acids, have potent activities on human promyelocytic
leukemia cells, HL-60, and other assay systems. Among them,
Am80,
AM580 and
Ch55 are more active than
retinoic acid in most cases. As these compounds possess quite different structures or physicochemical properties from
retinoic acid or conventional
retinoids, they are expected to be applied clinically for the treatments of the diseases in oncology and dermatology. Recently, progresses on the mechanistic studies on retinoidal actions have been reported. One of them is isolation and cloning of human
retinoic acid-receptors and the mechanism of retinoidal action was concluded that the
retinoid-receptor complex interact directly with
DNA to regulate the expression of the gene, like
steroid hormone. The other is the establishment of the presence of the
retinoid-specific-
binding protein (RSBP) by the use of our retinobenzoic
acids as the probe.