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[An experimental study on cerulenin induced apoptosis of human colonic cancer cells]
1Department of Pathology, Nanjing Railway Medical College, Naijing 210009, China.
Objective:
To investigate whether cerulenin could induce apoptosis and suppress the proliferation of human colonic cancer cells.
Methods:
Cell morphology, microculture tetrazolium assay (MTT), agarose gel electrophoresis and flow cytometry assays were performed to identify the inhibitory effect on cell proliferation and the induction of apoptosis in human colonic cancer cells (LoVo).
Results:
Cerulenin was able to induce LoVo cells death via apoptosis. Cerulenin also inhibited the proliferation of LoVo cells in vitro and was dose-dependent. Nuclear DNA of apoptotic cells displayed ladder bands characteristic of internucleosomal DNA fragmentation and apoptotic peak. The inhibitory effect of cerulenin on proliferation of LoVo cells was associated with cell cycle arrest from S to G(2)-M phase transition and with induction of apoptosis. In contrast, cerulenin could not affect the proliferation of human fibroblasts in vitro.
Conclusion:
The fatty acid synthase inhibitor, cerulenin, enables to induce cell apoptosis and to suppress the growth of human colonic cancer cells by inhibition of the synthesized fatty acids endogenously in the cancer cells.
