Authors: Zhenbei Gao Xiao Kang Jun Hu Yong Ju Chuanlian Xu
Publish Date: 2012/01/25
Volume: 64, Issue: 4, Pages: 421-428
Abstract
Glycyrrhetinic acid GA is the active compound in Glycyrrhizae radix a famous traditional Chinese medicine Recently the anticancer activity of GA became the focus of scientific interest and many GA derivatives were developed as antitumor lead compounds We previously reported that AEGA a GA derivative has proliferation inhibition and apoptosisinducing activity in various human tumor cells The present study was undertaken to further investigate the molecular mechanisms involved in AEGAinduced apoptosis in human leukemia K562 cells AEGA can inhibit the growth of K562 cells in dose and timedependent manners determined by the MTT assay Induction of apoptosis was evidenced by morphological changes and biochemical markers such as cell shrinkage chromatin condensation and DNA ladder formation Further mechanistic analysis revealed that AEGA induced apoptosis through the collapse of mitochondrial membrane potential the accumulation of the cytosolic cytochrome c and the activation of caspase9 and caspase3 The apoptosis induction by AEGA was associated with the alteration in the ratio of Bcl2/Bax protein expression These results suggest that AEGA may induce apoptosis through a mitochondriamediated pathway and might have the therapeutic value against hematological malignanciesThis work is supported in part by Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China Y4110320 Natural Science Foundation of China Nos 20772071 20972086 and the Opening Foundation of Biomedicine Engineering Key Discipline Zhejiang China SWYX0901
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