Silibinin Causes Apoptosis and Cell Cycle Arrest in Some Human Pancreatic Cancer Cells

International Journal of Molecular Sciences

Yakun Ge³  Yuanxin Zhang³  Yunpeng Chen²  Quanshun Li³  Jun Chen¹  Ying Dong¹ 

[1] School of Pharmacy, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, Jiangsu 212013, China; E-Mails:;The Center for Combinatorial Chemistry and Drug Discovery, the College of Pharmacy, Jilin University, Changchun 130021, China; E-Mail:;Key Laboratory for Molecular Enzymology & Engineering of the Ministry of Education, School of Life Science, Jilin University, Changchun 130023, China; E-Mails:

关键词: Silibinin;    cell proliferation;    apoptosis;    cell-cycle arrest;    pancreatic cancer;   

DOI  :  10.3390/ijms12084861

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Silibinin, an effective anti-cancer and chemopreventive agent in various epithelial cancer models, has been reported to inhibit cancer cell growth through mitogenic signaling pathways. However, whether it can inhibit human pancreatic carcinoma growth and what are the underlying mechanisms is still not well elucidated. Here, we evaluated the inhibitory proliferation effects of Silibinin in pancreatic carcinoma growth and examined whether Silibinin modulates cell cycle and apoptosis. Our results indicate that Silibinin effectively inhibited the pancreatic carcinoma AsPC-1, BxPC-3 and Panc-1 cells’ proliferation and caused apoptosis. Silibinin induced a decrease in S phase and cell cycle arrest in G1 phase in AsPC-1 cells, but had no obvious changes in BxPC-3 and Panc-1 cell cycle. Furthermore, these results suggest that Silibinin might be a candidate chemopreventive agent for pancreatic carcinoma therapy.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2011 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.