Propolis,the Function Of Protecting Liver And Antitumor Activity

Propolis, a kind of natural product, which is collected by honeybees from resin,beeswax, pollen and its glandular secretions. It was reported that propolis had its broadlybiological activities and pharmacological effects, such as antibacterial, antifungal, antiviral,anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and antitumor. Therefore, it has been widely used in healthfood products and medical health industry, strengthen human body and prevent theoccurrence of diseases etc.Hepatocytes injury is caused by a variety of harmful factors that lead tophysiological abnormal pathological phenomena in clinical. Every year the number ofdeaths from hepatocytes disease is more than300,000people. Hepatocytes injury ismainly caused by viral infections, drugs, chemicals and drinking. The damagedhepatocytes cells may release the ALT, AST and the SOD is also increasing. If it can’tbe treated properly,it would cause chronic hepatitis and develop hepatocytes cirrhosiseventually.Breast cancer is one of the most common malignant tumor, threatening women’s lifeand health in the world. There are two main kinds of breast cancer cells. One kind isestrogen receptor positive cells: MCF-7, the other is negative for estrogen receptors cells:MDA-MB-231. Nowdays the main way to treat cancer is radiation therapy, but the sideeffects of the treatment is seriously harmful, not only killing the cancer cells but normalcells. Propolis serve as a kind of natural products from plants, it has antitumor biologicalactivity. Under a certain concentration, it can induce apoptosis of breast cancer and havealmostly no toxicity to normal cells.In this experiment, via the rat hepatocytes injury model induced by H2O2in vitroand culturing the breast cancer cells in vitro, after adding the propolis, we found that theeffect levels of ALT, AST, SOD, MDA and observed the nuclear shape of breast cancercells, and also detected the levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS), mitochondrialmembrane potential (MMP) and some related protein expression, such as tumorsuppressor p53protein, membrane protein A7and nuclear transcription factor NF-κB p65protein, provided the basis for illustrating that propolis played a role in protecinghepatocytes damage repair and facilitated apoptosis of breast cancer.Our research results are as follows:1. In the experiment of hepatocytes injury induced by H2O2, the Chinese propolisand Brazilian propolis (6.25,12.5,25μg/ml) improved the survival rate of hepatocytescells significantly after induced by H2O2, and inhibited cell apoptosis, reduced the levelsof ALT, AST and MDA in the cell, and improved the level of SOD.2. In the research of antitumor activity of propolis, Chinese propolis (25,50,100,200μg/ml) reduced the survival rate of the breast cancer cells MCF-7and MDA-MB-231.Chinese propolis caused membrane shrinkage of the cancer cells, nucleus fragmentation,but little effect on the survival rate of the HUVEC cells; Chinese propolis inhibited thecell migration rate, improved the level of cell active oxygen, reduced the mitochondrialmembrae potential,increased the p53protein,Casepase3protein and A7proteinexpression and decreased the NF-κB p65protein expression.In a word, we found that the Chinese propolis and Brazilian propolis could repair thedamaged hepatocytes cells effectively and resist tumor in vitro, and showed that theconcentration of100μg/ml of propolis had strong inhibition for breast cancer cells buthad very little toxicity to normal cells.