Apoptosis and antitumor effects between β-elemene and astragaloside and drug mechanism analysis

β-elemene is an effective anticancer drug extracted from Rhizoma curcumae. It is a non cytotoxic antineoplastic agent, which can obviously inhibit the proliferation of tumor cells. In this paper, we observed the proliferation inhibition and apoptosis of β-elemene and Astragaloside on human hepatoma cell HepG2 and mouse hepatoma H22 cells, and provide a reference for further proof that β-elemene and astragaloside can induce tumor cell apoptosis. The results showed that after 24 h, group astragaloside, β-elemene group and combined treatment group had inhibitory effect on the proliferation of HePG2 cells, in which the combined treatment group had the best effect and the inhibition rate reached 66.71%. The apoptosis rates of Hep G2 cells in the drug treatment group were 0.9%, 22.4% and 45.8%, respectively, and there was statistical significance in each drug group compared with the control group (P<0.05). It can be seen that Astragalus membranaceus and β-elemene have obvious inhibitory effects on the growth of liver cancer cells and their combination has synergistic effect.