[An experimental study on cerulenin induced apoptosis of
human colonic cancer cells]
[Article in Chinese]
Huang P, Zhu S, Lu S, Dai Z, Jin Y.
Department of Pathology, Nanjing Railway Medical College, Naijing 210009, China.
OBJECTIVE: To investigate whether cerulenin could induce apoptosis and suppress
the proliferation of human colonic cancer cells. METHODS: Cell morphology,
microculture tetrazolium assay (MTT), agarose gel electrophoresis and flow
cytometry assays were performed to indentify the inhibitory effect on cell
proliferation and the induction of apoptosis in human colonic cancer cells (LoVo).
RESULTS: Cerulenin was able to induce LoVo cells death via apoptosis. Cerulenin
also inhibited the proliferation of LoVo cells in vitro and was dose-dependent.
Nuclear DNA of apoptotic cells displayed ladder bands characteristic of
internucleosomal DNA fragmentation and apoptotic peak. The inhibitory effect of
cerulenin on proliferation of LoVo cells was associated with cell cycle arrest
from S to G(2)-M phase transition and with induction of apoptosis. In contrast,
cerulenin could not affect the proliferation of human fibroblasts in vitro.
CONCLUSION: The fatty acid synthase inhibitor, cerulenin, enables to induce cell
apoptosis and to suppress the growth of human colonic cancer cells by inhibition
of the synthesized fatty acids endogenously in the cancer cells.
