Antitumor Activity of Etoposide, Puerarin, Galangin and Their Combinations in Neuroblastoma Cells

Abstract

Neuroblastoma is a disease that is observed in early childhood, originating from the sympathetic nervous system and very difficult to treat. Etoposide, a topoisomerase 2 inhibitor, is one of the agents used in cancer treatment. Galangin and puerarin are plant-based antioxidants with anticancer properties. Since apoptosis induction is one of the methods used in cancer treatment, the evaluation of the mRNA expression levels of apoptosis-related genes is aimed in our study. We investigated the effects of etoposide and galangin/puerarin combination therapy on neuroblastoma and astrocyte cells’ apoptotic process in this study. IC50 dose was determined by MTT test in neuroblastoma and healthy astrocyte lines. Apoptosis-related mRNA gene expressions (topoisomerase 1 and 2α, BAX, p53, TNFα, BCL-2, caspase 3, IL-1, caspase 9) were evaluated in astrocyte and neuroblastoma cells at the dose of neuroblastoma IC50. It was resulted that in all groups, the neuroblastoma IC50 dose was lower than the healthy astrocyte cell IC50 dose and while an increase in apoptotic mRNA expressions was observed in the neuroblastoma cancer line, the mRNA expression changes in the astrocyte cell line did not cause apoptosis. Etoposide combinations antiproliferative effect was decreased relative to etoposide group. It is concluded that single therapy of galangin and puerarin may be promising in the treatment of neuroblastoma.