Tropical Journal of Pharmaceutical Research

Original Research Article | OPEN ACCESS

Anti-proliferation effect of Scutellaria barbata D. Don extract on lung cancer

Zhang Hu¹, Duan Jing²

¹Department of Thoracic Surgery; ²Department of Anesthesiology, Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital Affiliated with Medical College of Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310021, China.

For correspondence:- Duan Jing Email: duanjing133@126.com Tel:+8657186090024

Accepted: 16 August 2019 Published: 01 October 2019

Citation: Hu Z, Jing D. Anti-proliferation effect of Scutellaria barbata D. Don extract on lung cancer. Trop J Pharm Res 2019; 18(9):1867-1872 doi: 10.4314/tjpr.v18i9.12

© 2019 The authors.
This is an Open Access article that uses a funding model which does not charge readers or their institutions for access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) and the Budapest Open Access Initiative (http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read), which permit unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited..

Abstract

Purpose: To investigate the effect of Scutellaria barbata D. Don extract (SBDE) on apoptosis and proliferation in A549 human lung cancer cells.

Methods: Inverted microscope was used to observe morphological changes in A549 cells after exposure to SBDE. Trypan blue staining of living cells was applied to construct cell growth curve after treatment with varying concentrations of SBDE. The influence of SBDE on cell proliferation, apoptosis and cell cycle was determined by MTT assay while protein expressions of key apoptosis-related enzymes were evaluated by immuno-cytochemical method.

Results: SBDE inhibited the growth of A549 lung cancer cells at a concentration range of 20 - 160 μg/mL. Flow cytometry showed that SBDE induced apoptosis in the A549 cells. The proportion of cells in G0/G1-phase increased significantly (p < 0.01), while the proportion of cells in S-phase and G2/M-phase decreased correspondingly, indicating that the cells were in G0/G1-phase arrest. Cell cycle arrest and apoptosis-inducing effect gradually increased with increase in SBDE concentration. With increasing concentrations of SBDE, there were significant increases in the expressions of caspase-3 (p < 0.05), caspase-8 (p < 0.01) and caspase-9 (p < 0.05), and significant decreases in Ki-67 (p < 0.01) and p21 ras protein (p < 0.01).

Conclusion: SBDE exerts significant inhibitory effect on the proliferation of A549 lung cancer cells, which can be developed for the treatment of lung cancer patients.

Keywords: Scutellaria barbata D. Don, Antitumor activity, Lung cancer A549 cells, Apoptosis, Cell cycle arrest, Caspase