Effects of astragali radix on the growth of different cancer cell lines

Abstract

Aim: To investigate the inhibitory effect of a Chinese herb medicine Astragali radix (AR) on growth of different cancer cell line.

Methods: To observe the in vitro effects of AR on tumor cell proliferation by trypan blue exclusion, MTS method and tritium thymidine incorporation assay. Apoptosis was detected by DNA ladder method.

Results: The inhibition rates of AR on the cell respiration of AGS, KATOIII, HT29, MDA231, MEL7 and MEL14 were 68.25 %, 62.36 %, 22.8 %, 27.69 %, 2.85 % and 5.14 % respectively at the concentration of 100 ug/ml; it inhibited AGS DNA synthesis by 87.33 % at the concentration of 50 ug/ml. The inhibitory effect on AGS was time-and dose-dependent. AR did not induce apoptosis in AGS cells.

Conclusion: AR specifically inhibits gastric cancer cells growth in vitro and the mechanism is mainly cytostatic but not cytotoxic or inducing apoptosis.

Figure 1

Effect of AR on the growth of 6 cancer cell lines. Cells were treated with AR at the concentration of 100 µg/mL for 48 hrs and cell growth was measured with MTS method.

Figure 2

Effect of AR on AGS viability. AGS cells were treated with different concentrations of AR for 48 hrs and cell viability was measured with trypan blue. At or below the concentra-tion of 50 µg/mL, AR was not cytotoxic to AGS cells. But at the concentration of 100 µg/mL, it showed cytotoxicity on AGS.

Figure 3

Dose-dependent effect of AR on AGS growth. AGS cells were treated with a serial of diluted concentrations (1, 12.5, 25, 50 and 100 µg/mL) of AR for 48 hrs and cell growth was measured with MTS method. The inhibition effect of AR was improved accompanied by increase of concentration.

Figure 4

Time-dependent effect of AR on AGS growth. AGS cells were treated with 50 µg/mL of AR for 6, 12, 24 and 48 hrs. The cell growth was measured by MTS method. The inhibition effect of AR on AGS growth was enhanced with incubation time.

Figure 5

Effect of AR on DNA synthesis of AGS. AGS cells were treated with a serial of diluted concentrations (1, 12.5, 25, 50 and 100 µg/mL) of AR for 48 hrs and cell growth was mea-sured with tritium labeled thymidine incorporation assay. AR started to inhibit the DNA synthesis of AGS at 1 µg/mL and the inhibiting effect was dose-dependent.