Effect Of Phytosterol On Proliferation And Apoptosis Of SGC-7901 Stomach Cancer Cells

Phytosterols are natural steroid existed in many fruits, vegetables and edible oil. Recently, results of considerable experiments have indicated that phytosterols inhibited occurrence rate and development of many tumors, and their anticancer effects present diversity character. There are many studies related to the inhibition or prohibition of phytosterol on prostatic carcinoma, colon carcinoma and breast carcinoma. However, No reports related to the effect of phytosterol on the proliferation and apoptosis of gastric carcinoma cells have been found in the references worldwide up to now. Gastric carcinoma is one of the important cancer and death cause in the world, especially in Asia, and there are no effective ways to prevent and treat until now..MTT assay, AO/EB and DAPI dyeing method, Annexin V-FITC-PI assay, transmission electron microscope, comet asaay and DNA agarose electrophoresis are used to investgate the inhibitory effect and the induction apoptosis of phytosterol in SGC-7901 gastric carcinoma cells. Western Blot was used to explore the possible mechanisms of phytosterol which induced apoptosis of SGC-7901. The results demonstrated that phytosterols inhibited the proliferation of SGC-7901 cells in a time-dependent manner. Dyeing assay and transmission electron microscope showed that phytosterol induced apoptosis of SGC-7901 gastric carcinoma cells. Results of Comet assay and DNA agarose electrophoresis demonstrated that phytosterol could reult in DNA damage and induction of apoptosis of SGC-7901 cells. Results of Western bolt showed that Phytosterol decreased the expression of Bcl-2 and NF-κBp65; increased the expression of Bax; promoted the activation of caspase-3 and induced it to cleave to P17 and P20, two fragments of caspase-3. Thus, we conclude from our study that phytosterols could inhibite the proliferation and induced apoptosis of SGC-7901 human stomach cancer cells.