and induces apoptosis in the A549 lung cancer cell line. Furthermore, CuB induced apoptosis of A549 cells in a concentration-dependent manner, as ...
MOLECULAR MEDICINE REPORTS 10: 2905-2911, 2014
Cucurbitacin B inhibits proliferation and induces apoptosis via STAT3 pathway inhibition in A549 lung cancer cells MENG ZHANG1, ZHI-GANG BIAN2, YI ZHANG1, JIA-HE WANG1, LIANG KAN1, XIN WANG1, HUI-YAN NIU1 and PING HE1 Departments of 1Geriatrics and 2Otolaryngology, Shengjing Hospital of China Medical University, Shenyang, Liaoning 110004, P.R. China Received December 2, 2013; Accepted July 21, 2014 DOI: 10.3892/mmr.2014.2581 Abstract. Natural products are a great source of cancer chemotherapeutic agents. The present study was conducted to investigate whether cucurbitacin B (CuB), one of the most potent and widely used cucurbitacins, inhibits proliferation and induces apoptosis in the A549 lung cancer cell line. Furthermore, CuB induced apoptosis of A549 cells in a concentration-dependent manner, as determined by fluorescence microscopy, flow cytometry and transmission electron microscopy. The present study also demonstrated that CuB dose-dependently inhibited lung cancer cell proliferation, with cell cycle inhibition and cyclin B1 downregulation. Apoptosis induced by CuB was shown to be associated with cytochrome c release, B-cell lymphoma 2 downregulation and signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 pathway inhibition. CuB may prove to be a useful approach for the chemotherapy of lung cancer. Introduction Lung cancer is one of the most common malignant tumor types worldwide, with increasing incidence and mortality rates (1). Despite the development of improved therapy modalities in the past two decades, the five-year survival rate has remained
