Yin Xiaolu, Zhou Jiangbing, Jie Chunfa, Xing Dongming, Zhang Ying
Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, 615 N. Wolfe Street, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA.
Life Sci. 2004 Sep 17;75(18):2233-44. doi: 10.1016/j.lfs.2004.05.015.
Scutellaria barbata (S. barbata), a traditional Chinese herbal medicine native to southern China, is widely used as an anti-inflammatory and a diuretic in China. Several studies have indicated that extracts of S. barbata have growth inhibitory effects on a number of human cancers. Treatment of lung cancer, digestive system cancers, hepatoma, breast cancer, and chorioepithelioma by S. barbata extracts was reported. However, the mechanism underlying the antitumor activity was unclear. In this study, we studied the growth inhibitory effect of S. barbata and determined its mechanism of antitumor activity using human lung cancer cell line A549. Our results showed that ethanol extracts of S. barbata greatly inhibited A549 cell growth, with IC50 of 0.21 mg/ml. The major mechanisms of inhibition included cell apoptosis and cytotoxic effects. cDNA microarray analysis showed that 16 genes, involved in DNA damage, cell cycle control, nucleic acid binding and protein phosphorylation, underwent more than 5-fold change. These data indicated that these processes are involved in S. barbata-mediated killing of cancer cells. A surprising finding is that CD209, related to dendritic cell (DC) function, was dramatically downregulated by 102-fold. Further functional studies are needed to assess the role of the array-identified genes in S. barbata mediated anticancer activity.
半枝莲是一种原产于中国南方的传统中草药，在中国被广泛用作抗炎药和利尿剂。多项研究表明，半枝莲提取物对多种人类癌症具有生长抑制作用。有报道称半枝莲提取物可用于治疗肺癌、消化系统癌症、肝癌、乳腺癌和绒毛膜上皮癌。然而，其抗肿瘤活性的潜在机制尚不清楚。在本研究中，我们使用人肺癌细胞系A549研究了半枝莲的生长抑制作用，并确定了其抗肿瘤活性机制。我们的结果表明，半枝莲乙醇提取物显著抑制A549细胞生长，IC50为0.21mg/ml。主要抑制机制包括细胞凋亡和细胞毒性作用。cDNA微阵列分析显示，16个与DNA损伤、细胞周期控制、核酸结合和蛋白质磷酸化相关的基因发生了超过5倍的变化。这些数据表明这些过程参与了半枝莲介导的癌细胞杀伤。一个惊人的发现是，与树突状细胞（DC）功能相关的CD209被显著下调了102倍。需要进一步的功能研究来评估阵列鉴定的基因在半枝莲介导的抗癌活性中的作用。
