Mechanism of Antitumor Drug Action Assessed by Cytometry

Synthesis and Characterization of Long-Chain Tartaric Acid Diamides as Novel Ceramide-Like Compounds

“…As ceramides are key mediators in apoptosis [ 16 ], preliminary apoptotic studies were performed with compounds 5a – j as follows: primer mouse embryonic fibroblasts were incubated with 10 −5 mol/L of the compounds for 24 h and nucleosomal DNA fragmentation, a marker of apoptotic cell death, was analyzed by flow cytometry. Apoptotic cells are identified by their subdiploid DNA content after staining with the DNA intercalating dye, propidium iodide [ 17 , 18 , 19 ]. The percents of apoptotic cells corresponding to the sub-G 1 phase were found to be not significantly different from those prepared with pure solvent that proved the absence of ceramide-like pro-apoptotic activity, which is an advantage for transdermal delivery systems ( Figure 2 ).…”