Tropical Journal of Pharmaceutical Research

Original Research Article | OPEN ACCESS

Neferine induces apoptosis of pancreatic cancer cells through p38 MAPK/JNK activation

Tielan Feng¹, Hao Chen², Yaofang Peng³, Xiaoming Sun⁴

¹Department of Operation Room; ²Department of Cancer Center; ³Department of Pharmacy; ⁴Department of Nurse Department, The First hospital of Lanzhou University, Lanzhou City, Gansu Province 730000, China.

For correspondence:- Xiaoming Sun Email: XiaomingSunsdr@163.com Tel:+86-9318357027

Accepted: 30 July 2019 Published: 27 August 2019

Citation: Feng T, Chen H, Peng Y, Sun X. Neferine induces apoptosis of pancreatic cancer cells through p38 MAPK/JNK activation. Trop J Pharm Res 2019; 18(8):1609-1613 doi: 10.4314/tjpr.v18i8.6

© 2019 The authors.
This is an Open Access article that uses a funding model which does not charge readers or their institutions for access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) and the Budapest Open Access Initiative (http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read), which permit unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited..

Abstract

Purpose: To investigate the functional role of neferine on pancreatic cancer (PC) cell apoptosis.

Methods: The pancreatic cell line, PANC-1 cells, was exposed with different concentration of neferine. CCK8 and flow cytometry (Cell counting kit-8) were carried out to detect cell proliferation and apoptosis. Protein expression was evaluated by western blot.

Results: Neferine suppressed cell viability and caused cell cycle arrest of pancreatic cells in a dose-dependent way. The effect of neferine on pancreatic cells was dependent on its ability to regulate the expression of cyclin E, cyclin D1, p21, cleaved caspase-3, cleaved PARP, Bcl-2 and Bax. In addition, neferine treatment induced the apoptosis of PANC-1 cells via promoting the activation of p38 MAPK/JNK signaling pathway.

Conclusions: Neferine inhibits cell viability and proliferation, and promotes apoptosis of PC cells by activating p38 MAPK/JNK signaling pathway. These results indicated the potential therapeutic effect of neferine in the treatment of PC.

Keywords: Neferine, Proliferation, Apoptosis, Pancreatic cancer, p38 MAPK/JNK