Matrine induces programmed cell death and regulates expression of relevant genes based on PCR array analysis in C6 glioma cells

Abstract

Matrine, one of the main components extracted from Sophora flavescens Ait, has a wide range of pharmacological effects including anti-tumor activities on a number of cancer cell lines. This study has investigated whether matrine could also display anti-tumor action on rat C6 glioma cells. Exposure of C6 cells to matrine resulted in inhibition of proliferation and induction of apoptosis in a dose-dependent manner, as measured by the MTT assay and Flow cytometry. The Annexin V/PI staining further detected the apoptotic cells at both early and late phases of apoptosis. We used AO/EB staining to examine the programmed cell death of matrine-treated C6 cells, and showed that the death rate detected by AO/EB staining was higher than the apoptosis rate measured by Annexin V/PI staining, suggesting that autophagy, the Type II programmed cell death, may be involved in matrine-induced cell death, which was further confirmed by electronic microscopy. To explore the molecular mechanism, an apoptosis real-time PCR array was performed, which has demonstrated that 57 genes were at least 2-fold upregulated, and 11 genes were at least 2-fold downregulated in matrine-treated C6 cells, compared with untreated cells. However, the gene expression profiles could only partly and roughly explain molecular mechanisms of apoptosis and autophagy in matrine-treated C6 cells, thus further investigations are required to confirm the specific molecular pathways and related molecules responsible for the programmed cell death.

Ubenimex enhances the radiosensitivity of renal cell carcinoma cells by inducing autophagic cell death

“…After a 30-min incubation, the cells were washed again with PBS, stained with AO/EB and incubated for 30 min in the dark. Next, the cells were washed with PBS and analyzed by fluorescence microscopy (34). The percentage of positively stained cells was calculated to determine the death rate (%), which is the number of cells undergoing programmed cell death per 100 cells.…”

Autophagy is involved in anticancer effects of matrine on SGC-7901 human gastric cancer cells

“…Furthermore, matrine attenuated cancer cachexia-related symptoms in colon26 tumor-bearing mice probably through inhibiting the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines (33). In addition, it has been reported that matrine activated autophagy in rat c6 glioma cells (26). Accumulating studies have demonstrated that autophagy is closely associated with tumors and plays an important role in human tumor suppression (34)(35)(36).…”

“…Both in vivo and in vitro studies showed that matrine inhibits the proliferation of tumor cells (20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28). Matrine could induce apoptosis in leukemia U937 and K562 cells (29,30), gastric cancer MKn45 and sgc-7901 cells (23,25), c6 glioma cells (26), multiple myeloma cells (27), and hepatocellular carcinoma H22 cells (28). Matrine can also inhibit invasiveness and metastasis of human malignant melanoma cell line A375 and cervical cancer Hela cells (31,32), and induce differentiation of leukemia K562 cells (20).…”

Matrine Reduces Proliferation of Human Lung Cancer Cells by Inducing Apoptosis and Changing miRNA Expression Profiles

“…Recently, some studies displayed that matrine had potent anti-tumor bioeffect against various cancer cell lines by inhibiting and inducing apoptosis of gastric and cervical cancer cells, prostate cancer cells, leukemia and glioma cells (Hu et al, 2005;Liu et al, 2006;Jiang et al, 2007;Luo et al, 2007;Zhang et al, 2007;Liu et al, 2008;Zhang et al, 2009;Zhang et al, 2012a;Tan et al, 2013;), and also suppressed invasiveness and malignant of melanoma cell line A375 in vitro (Croce and Calin, 2005).…”

“…Moreover, it has been reported that miRNAs could be as a biomarker for detection of lung cancer at early stages (Yao et al, 2014;Zhu et al, 2014). Recent study showed that suppression of miRNAs by chemotherapeutic agents induced apoptosis in some cancer cells (Zhang et al, 2009). On the basis of the early results, in this research we investigated the underlying mechanism by which matrine may suppress cell proliferation in NSCLC cells.…”