Screening And Anti-tumor Activity Of Nutmeg And Their Underlying Mechanisms In Vitro

Pancreatic cancer is one of the most common malignant tumors in human atpresent. Despite high incidence, difficult to diagnose, limited treatment and poortreatment, it remains a long process in Cancer treatment. Surgery, radiation therapy,chemotherapy is the main treatment of malignant tumors. Currently, chemotherapyplays in important role in the three treatments. However, most of chemotherapy agentspossess serious side effects. Much attention has been paid to find novel anticanceragents with sources broad, low price, little side effects of Chinese medicine, as extractactive ingredients from Chinese medicine and development of anti-cancer new drugs.Crude extracts of nutmeg were divided into five-phase in the novel as following1.Petroleum ether phase,2. Ethyl acetate phase,3. Ethanol phases,4. Water phases. Celllines of different phases of the value-added inhibiting activity was assessed by MTTassay, and anti-tumor mechanism of effective active ingredient for nutmeg werestudiedThis experiments chooses five human cancer cells (human lung cancer cell A-549,human cervical cancer cells Hela, human hepatoma cells BEL-7402, human coloncancer cells HCT-116and human colon cancer cell line RKO) to detected appreciationinhibitory effect. The results of MTT assay showed that the proliferation of BEL-7402cells was inhibited by ethyl acetate phase in a concentration-dependent manner with anIC50of36.07μg/mL. Ethyl acetate phase of nutmeg could induce remarkable apoptosis,evidenced by an increased percentage of apoptotic cells, DNA ladder and nuclearmorphology change. Further study revealed that Ethyl acetate phase of nutmeg couldinduce generation of Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS), mitochondrial depolarization.Western blot analysis showed that ethyl acetate phase of nutmeg can release ofcytochrome C via mitochondrial pathway and result in the expression of Bcl-2/Bax,the expression of apoptosis-correlated proteins was also affected in cells treated withethyl acetate phase of nutmeg, including activation of caspases-3/9.In conclusion, Chinese medicine nutmeg as a low toxicity, safe and c heapanticancer substance, has the potential to become a new drug against human livercancer.