Tropical Journal of Pharmaceutical Research

Original Research Article | OPEN ACCESS

Studies on anti-hepatoma effect of Gan-Ai-Xiao decoction

Jian-Lei Yuan¹ , Shu-Mei Wang², Tao Lan¹, Jian-Zhong Liu¹, Gui-Hua Wang¹, Qing-Sen Sun¹, Hui Chen¹

¹Department of Hepato-Biliary-Pancreatic; ²Department of Pharmacy, People Hospital of Cangzhou City, Cangzhou Hebei 061000, PR China.

For correspondence:- Jian-Lei Yuan Email: jlyuan_2015@163.com Tel:+86 0317-3521817

Received: 6 March 2015 Accepted: 15 June 2015 Published: 29 July 2015

Citation: Yuan J, Wang S, Lan T, Liu J, Wang G, Sun Q, et al. Studies on anti-hepatoma effect of Gan-Ai-Xiao decoction. Trop J Pharm Res 2015; 14(7):1249-1255 doi: 10.4314/tjpr.v14i7.18

© 2015 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 explore the anti-hepatoma effect of Gan-Ai-Xiao Decoction (GAXD), a folk remedy.

Methods: High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) was used to identify the major chemical components of GAXD ethanol extract (EE). The cytotoxic effect of GAXD EE against HepG2 cells was measured by methyl thiazolyl tetrazolium (MTT) assay. Flow cytometry and Western blot were used to study the effect of GAXD EE on apoptosis and apoptotic proteins (Bcl-2, Bax and caspase-3) in HepG2 cells. Xenograft assay was used to evaluate the anti-hepatoma effect of GAXD EE in vivo.

Results: Four components were identified in GAXD EE by HPLC. The results of MTT and flow cytometry assays indicated that GAXD EE significantly reduced HepG2 cells viability (p < 0.05) and induced its apoptosis. The results of Western blot assay suggested that GAXD EE down-regulated the expression of anti-apoptotic protein (Bcl-2) and up-regulated the expression of pro-apoptotic proteins (Bax and caspase-3) in HepG2 cells. Furthermore, the results of xenograft assay showed that GAXD EE significantly inhibited the growth of HepG2 cells-induced tumor (p < 0.05) without any effect on the body weight of nude mice.

Conclusion: GAXD has anti-hepatoma activity, and the mechanism is associated with apoptosis.

Keywords: Gan-Ai-Xiao Decoction, Anti-hepatoma, Flow cytometry, Western blot, Xenograft, HepG2 cells, Apoptosis