[Curcumol Mediates the Programmed Cell Death in Acute Myeloid Leukemia through PI3K/AKT Signaling Pathway]

To investigate the effects of Curcumol on the malignant biological characteristics of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) cells and its molecular mechanism, and to provide theoretical and experimental evidence for the anti-leukemia treatment of traditional Chinese medicine.

After the AML cell lines HL-60 and KG-1 cells were treated different concentrations of with Curcumol. The proliferation activity of cells was detected by CCK-8 method, and the expression changes of apoptotic proteins and PI3K/AKT signaling pathway proteins were detected by Western blot. Real-time quantitative fluorescence polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) was used to detect the expression of Caspase family mRNA.

Curcumol could inhibit the proliferation and induce apoptosis of HL-60 and KG-1 cells, promote apoptosis by up-regulating the expression of Bax and down-regulating the expression of Bcl-2 protein (P <0.05). When Curcumol interferes with HL-60 and KG-1 cells, it can also induce programmed cell death of AML by inhibiting PI3K/AKT signaling pathway. In addition, after the intervention of Curcumol, the expression of Caspase 3, Caspase 6, Caspase 8 and Caspase 9 were up-regulated in HL-60 cells (P <0.05), the expression of Caspase 3, Caspase 8 and Caspase 9 were significantly up-regulated in KG- cells (P <0.01), while the expression of Caspase 6 was weakly affected (P <0.05), but low concentration of Curcumol (< 60 μg/ml) had no effect on the expression of Caspase 6 in KG-1 cells (P >0.05).

Curcumol may mediate the programmed death of AML cells by inhibiting the PI3K/AKT signaling pathway, affecting the expression of Bcl-2 family proteins, and promoting the activation of core members of Caspase family, so as to play an anti-leukemia role.