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Boswellic
acid acetate induces differentiation and apoptosis in leukemia cell lines
Jing
Y, Nakajo S, Xia L, Nakaya K, Fang Q, Waxman S, Han R
Department
of Pharmacology, Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Medical
Sciences, Beijing, People's Republic of China.
jing@msvax.mssm.edu
Boswellic
acid acetate (BC-4), a compound isolated from the herb Boswellia carterii Birdw.,
can induce differentiation and apoptosis of leukemia cells.
Based on cell morphology and NBT reduction, BC-4 induced monocytic
differentiation of myeloid leukemia HL-60, U937 and ML-1 cells at a dose under
12.5 microg/ml (24.2 microM).
BC-4 was a potent inducer, with 90% of the cells showing morphologic changes and
80-90% of the cells showing NBT reduction.
Specific and non-specific esterase were also increased by BC-4.
Based on benzidine staining assay, BC-4 failed to induce erythroid leukemia
DS-19 and K562 cells differentiation.
In contrast to its selective differentiation effect, BC-4 strongly inhibited
growth of all cell lines tested.
The growth inhibition effect was dose- and time-dependent.
In HL-60 cells, 20 microg/ml (38.8 microM) of BC-4 decreased viable cell number
by 60% at 24 h, whereas at 3 days there was virtually no viable cells.
Morphologic and DNA fragmentation analysis proved that BC-4 induced cell
apoptosis.
The dual apoptotic and differentiation effects of BC-4 suggest that it may be a
powerful agent in the treatment of leukemia.
PMID:
9933134 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Source:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=9933134&dopt=Abstract
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