Antitumor Effect Of Berberine And Its Differentiating Function On HL-60 Cells

This paper studied the antitumor activities of berberine, and its inducing differentiation of HL-60 cells. A mechanism for the berberine-induction of differentiation was explored preliminarily.The researches on the antitumor activities of berberine in vitro revealed that the growth of K562, HL-60,B16,SGC-7901,C6 ,OS,SMMC-7721cells was inhibited by berberine in dose-dependent manner. The IC50 of these cells exposed to the drug for 48 hours was 2.03,2.65,2.78,3.15,5.7,7.63,8.07mg/L, respectively. The proliferation and colony formation of HL-60 cells were inhibited obviously by berberine.Berberine could induce HL-60 cells myeloid differentiation into maturity: the nucleoplasmic ratio decreased; the positive rate of NBT reduction increased; expression of CD11b increased. The study on the mechanism of differentiation showed that berberine arrested HL-60 cell in G0/G1 phase; down-regulated c-myc gene expression, and up-regulated c-fos gene expression.The research results mentioned above testify that berberine has obvious antitumor effect and induction of differentiation of tumor cells. The possible mechanism might relate to modulation of gene expressions associated with proliferation and differentiation, which lead to inhibition of DNA sythesis.