Mechanism Of Rhein On The Inhibition Of Cell Proliferation In Prostate Cancer Cells

The use of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) for medicinal applications hasthousands of years track record. It has already been confirmed that rhein, extractedfrom TCM-rhubarb, has distinguished potential clinical value due to its anti-cancereffect not only in vitro but also in vivo. Prostate cancer is the most common cancerto threat elder men’s health, therefore, it is increasingly imperative to find effectivetreatment of prostate cancer. Androgen receptor plays an important role on cancer’soccurrence and evolutionary process as transcription regulatory factor. At present,the reasearch of AR has already become a hot issue, however, using rhein to targetandrogen receptor to explore the mechanism of cell proliferation inhibition hasrarely been reported.The research mainly selected two kinds of prostate cancer cells as experimentalmodel, respectively androgen receptor positive and androgen receptor negative ones.Firstly, we detected whether rhein could induced cell proliferation inhibition throughMTS and cell apoptosis assay. Then, we inspected the molecular mechanism of cellproliferation inhibition effect both on the gene level and on the protein level byquantitative real-time PCR and Western Blotting. Finally, we checked out andanalyzed the relationship between rhein and cell cycle distribution by FACS. Theresults indicate that rhein could inhibit prostate cancer cell proliferation and inducecell apoptosis; it could inhib it AR protein expression through AR mRNAdownregulation; it also could induce cell cycle arrest at S phase and inhibit cyclin Aand CDK2expression.Above all, this study had preliminarily clarified mechanis m of rhein on theinhibition of cell proliferation in prostate cancer cells either through changing cellcycle distribution or via inhibiting AR expression. It provides new reference forprostate cancer clinical therapy by targeting androgen receptor treated with TCM-rhein.