Daucus carota pentane-based fractions arrest the cell cycle and increase apoptosis in MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cells

BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Research Article

Wassim N Shebaby¹  Kikki Bodman-Smith¹  Robin I Taleb²  Costantine F Daher²  Mirvat El-Sibai²  Anthony Mansour³  Mohammad Mroueh⁴ 

[1] Department of Microbial and Cellular Sciences, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Surrey, Surrey, UK;Department of Natural Sciences, School of Arts and Sciences, Lebanese American University, P.O. Box 36, Byblos, Lebanon;School of Medicine, Lebanese American University, Byblos, Lebanon;School of Pharmacy, Lebanese American University, P.O. Box 36, Byblos, Lebanon;

关键词: Daucus carota;    Breast cancer;    Proliferation;    Apoptosis;    PI3K;    MAPK;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1472-6882-14-387

 received in 2014-02-14, accepted in 2014-10-01,  发布年份 2014

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundDaucus carota L.ssp.carota (wild carrot), an herb used in folk medicine worldwide, was recently demonstrated to exhibit anticancer activity. In this study we examined the anticancer effect of Daucus carota oil extract (DCOE) fractions on the human breast adenocarcinoma cell lines MDA-MB-231 and MCF-7 and clarified the mechanism of action.Methods and resultsUsing the WST assay, the pentane fraction (F1) and 1:1 pentane:diethyl ether fraction (F2) were shown to possess the highest cytotoxicity against both cell lines. Flow cytometric analysis revealed that both fractions induced the accumulation of cells in the sub-G1 phase, increase in apoptotic cell death and chromatin condensation. The increase in apoptosis in response to treatment was also apparent in the increase in BAX and the decrease in Bcl-2 levels as well as the proteolytic cleavage of both caspase-3 and PARP as revealed by Western blot. Furthermore, treatment of MDA-MB-231 cells with either fraction significantly reduced the level of phosphorylated Erk but did not show any effect on phosphorylated Akt. The combined treatment with a potent PI3K inhibitor (wortmannin) and F1 or F2 fraction had a synergistic inhibitory effect on cell survival which shows that these two drugs work on different pathways.ConclusionsThese results suggest that the pentane-based fractions of DCOE possess potential anti-cancer activity that is mainly mediated through the Erk pathway.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Shebaby et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.