ABSTRACT
This study was aimed to investigate the biological behavior of annonaceous acetogenin mimic AA005 in various kinds of leukemia cells and further elaborated its possible mechanisms in acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) cell line NB4. The proliferative inhibition of leukemia cells was measured by CCK-8 method. Cell death was determined by trypan blue. Cell morphological features of NB4 treated with AA005 were examined by microscopy after Wright's staining. The form of cell death was measured by flow cytometry. Proteins PARP-1 and caspase-3 were detected by Western blot. Flow cytometry was used to detect the cell cycle arrest induced by AA005 of low concentration. The results showed that AA005 (> 200 nmol/L) significantly inhibited proliferation of all tested leukemia cell lines in a concentration-dependent manner. The vast majority of cells went to die after leukemia cell lines of NB4, U937 and K562 were treated with different concentration of AA005 for 48 h. Typical morphologic changes significantly appeared in NB4 cells after AA005 treatment. AA005 almost simultaneously induced early apoptosis and late apoptosis. The little cleavage of PARP-1 and activation of caspase-3 happened in AA005-induced cell death, and caspase-3 inhibitor Z-VAD-fmk could not block the cell death. The non-toxic concentrations of AA005 (< 200 nmol/L) caused NB4 cells G(2)/M-phase arrest. It is concluded that annonaceous acetogenin mimic AA005 induces significant proliferative inhibition of various leukemia cell lines in a concentration-dependent manner, which may be associated with cell death and G(2)/M-phase arrest induced by AA005.