Experimental study on gambogic acid-induced gastric cancer cell apoptosis and anti-tumor metastasis.

Objective To investigate the inhibition of gambogic acid on proliferation and metastasis ability of BGC-803 cells and to study their preliminary mechanism further.Methods Methyl thiazolyl tetrazolium(MTT) and Hoechst staining were used to study the effects of gambogic acid-induced apoptosis in gastric cancer cell line BGC-803;Invasive methods were used to study the effects of invasion,adhesion,migration by gambogic acid;The influence of gambogic acid on the expression of bcl-2,bax,and ICAM-1 gene in gastric cancer cells was evaluated by RT-PCR and Western-blotting.Results Gambogic acid was found not only to inhibit the growth of BGC-803 cells but also to induce the cell apoptosis in a dose-and time-dependent manner.The ability of adhesion,migration,and invasiveness was clearly inhibited by gambogic acid.With the increase of gambogic acid concentration,the expression of bcl-2,ICAM-1 gene,and protein were down-regulated and the expression of bax gene and protein were up-regulated.ConclusionGambogic acid could inhibit the growth of gastric cancer cells BGC-803 significantly,have a significant role in promoting tumor cell apoptosis,and inhibit tumor cell metastasis-associated properties.The mechanism may be related to decrease of bcl-2,ICAM-1 expression and increase bax expression.