Procyanidins from Pinus koraiensis bark inhibits HeLa cell growth by inducing apoptosis and reducing survivin protein expression

Abstract

Recently, the development of herbal medicine is an important advancement in anticancer therapy. Pinus koraiensis bark procyanidins extract (PKBPE) has been used in traditional Chinese medicine for thousands of years. Our study demonstrated that P. koraiensis bark procyanidins extract had antitumor effects. In some of our recent experiment, we further explored the inhibiting Hela activity of the procyanidins from P. koraiensis bark. In this study, the effect of procyanidins from P. koraiensis bark on inhibiting Hela cells growth has been investigated by many approaches which are MTT method, agarose gel electrophoresis and Western blot method in vitro. The results showed that Marron powder were extracted from P. koraiensis bark with the extract purity of 21.04%, which was identified as procyanidins. In HeLa cell experiments, the IC₅₀ values of PKBPE was 196.38 μg/ml. PKBPE could make the agarose gel electrophoresis of HeLa cells appear with “ladder” zone in a dose-dependent manner, increase the expression of Bax, reduce Bcl-2 and survivin protein expressions. These results showed that the mechanism of PKBPE inducing apoptosis might be associated with increasing the expression of Bax protein, reducing Bcl-2 and survivin protein expressions.

Key words: Pinus koraiensis bark, procyanidins, HeLa cell, apoptosis.