Mechanism Study of HL-60 Leukemic Cells Proliferative Inhibition Induced by Chinese Medicinal Herbs Mixture Jieduweikang Pill.

Background. It’s not surprising that the traditional Chinese herbal remedy is yielding useful drug leads. The mixture composed of thirteen Chinese medicinal plants---jieduweikang(JDWK) pill including Qingdai, Qinghao, Huangchi, Baihuasheshecao, Banzhilian and so on has been shown the clinical antitumor effects in China. We here report the mechanism investigation of JDWK pill cytotoxicity to leukemia cell line HL-60.

Methods By using the method of serum pharmacology, the serum containing the JDWK pill was collected from rats. The MTT and tumor colony formation were used to determine the effects of JDWK pill on proliferation of HL-60 cells. NBT reduction, DNA electrophoresis, flow cytometry and RT-PCR were used to analyze the differentiation and apoptosis of HL-60 cells after treating with JDWK pill. Elisa was used to assay the secretion of VEGF from HL-60 cells.

Results The liquid growth and colony formation of HL-60 cells were evidently inhibited by the serum containing JDWK pill and the cells were shown characteristic DNA “ladder” on agarose gel electrophoresis and more than 20% apoptotic cells in DNA histogram as well as the downregulation of bcl-2 gene related to apoptosis in a concentration-dependent manner, compared with the control. NBT reduction assay indicated that JDWK pill with low concentration may induce myeloid terminal differentiation of HL-60 cells and the level of VEGF was obviously decresed.

Conclusion The JDWK pill can exerts the its anti-proliferative effect on the leukemic HL-60 cells through inducing apoptosis relating to the downregulation of Bcl-2 gene and anti-angiogenic effects with higher concentration and inducing myeloid differentiation with lower concentration.