Journal
ACTA BIOCHIMICA ET BIOPHYSICA SINICA
Volume 43, Issue 1, Pages 30-37Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1093/abbs/gmq107
Keywords
quercetin; apoptosis; cyclooxygenase-2; leukemia
Categories
Funding
- Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province [9151008901000105]
- Science and Technology Planning of Guangdong Province [2008B060600032]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Quercetin is one of the naturally occurring dietary flavonol compounds. It is present abundantly in plants and has chemopreventive and anticancer effects. To investigate its anticancer mechanism, we examined the activity of quercetin against acute leukemia cell line, HL-60. Our results showed that quercetin inhibited cell proliferation and induced apoptosis in a time- and dose-dependent manner. Furthermore, quercetin down-regulated the expression of anti-apoptosis protein Bcl-2 and up-regulated the expression of pro-apoptosis protein Bax. Caspase-3 was also activated by quercetin, which started a caspase-3-depended mitochodrial pathway to induce apoptosis. It was also found that quercetin inhibited the expression of the cycloocygenase-2 (Cox-2) mRNA and Cox-2 protein. Taken together, these findings suggested that quercetin induces apoptosis in a caspase-3-dependent pathway by inhibiting Cox-2 expression and regulates the expression of downstream apoptotic components, including Bcl-2 and Bax. Quercetin can be a potent and promising medicine which might be safely used in leukemia therapy.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available