Integrative Medicine > Boswellia  

Abstract

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]