ABSTRACT
The present study was conducted to investigate the effects of gossypol acetic acid (GAA) on the proliferation of human mucoepidermoid carcinoma cell line MEC-1 in vitro and its possible molecular mechanisms of DNA double-strand breaks (DSB). MTT assay was performed to test the inhibition of proliferation of MEC-1 cells by GAA. DSB and γH2AX foci formation induced by GAA were detected by neutral comet assay and immunostaining. GAA (5-40 μmol/L) inhibited the growth of MEC-1 cells in a dose- and time-dependent manner. One of the indexes of comet assay, percentage of head DNA was decreased, however other indexes, including tail length, percentage of tail DNA, tail moment (TM) and Olive tail moment (OTM) were increased when treated with 2.5- 40 μmol/L GAA for 24 h or 20 μmol/L GAA for 3-48 h, compared with those in control. The percentage of γH2AX-positive cells was also increased when MEC-1 was treated with 2.5-20 μmol/L GAA for 24 h or 20 μmol/L GAA for 3-48 h, compared with that in control. All these results show that GAA inhibits the proliferation of MEC-1, and DSB maybe one of the mechanisms of inhibitory effect of GAA on the growth of tumor cells.