Zeng-lu Xu, Xiuping Chen, Shu-jun Fu
Dec 10, 2012
Citations
1
Influential Citations
40
Citations
Quality indicators
Journal
The American journal of Chinese medicine
Abstract
Dehydrocorydaline is an alkaloid isolated from traditional Chinese herb Corydalis yanhusuo W.T. Wang. We discovered that it possessed anti-tumor potential during screening of anti-tumor natural products from Chinese medicine. In this study, its anti-tumor potential was investigated with breast cancer line cells MCF-7 in vitro. The anti-proliferative effect of dehydrocorydaline was determined by MTT assay and the mitochondrial membrane potential (Δ Ψ m) was monitored by JC-1 staining. DNA fragments were visualized by Hoechst 33342 staining and DNA ladder assay. Apoptotic related protein expressions were measured by Western blotting. Dehydrocorydaline significantly inhibited MCF-7 cell proliferation in a dose- dependent manner, which could be reversed by a caspase-8 inhibitor, Z-IETD-FMK. Dehydrocorydaline increased DNA fragments without affecting ΔΨm. Western blotting assay showed that dehydrocorydaline dose-dependently increased Bax protein expression and decreased Bcl-2 protein expression. Furthermore, dehydrocorydaline induced activation of caspase-7,-8 and the cleavage of PARP without affecting caspase-9. These results showed that dehydrocorydaline inhibits MCF-7 cell proliferation by inducing apoptosis mediated by regulating Bax/Bcl-2, activating caspases as well as cleaving PARP.