ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE：To investigate the effects of dihydroartemisinin （DHA）on the metabolism of amino acid metabolites in human hepatocellular carcinoma cells Huh 7 and BEL- 7402，and to provide theoretic basis for clarifying the mechanism of DHA regulating the metabolism of hepatocellular carcinoma cells. METHODS ：CCK-8 method was taken to detect the effect of different concentrations of DHA （12.5，25，50，100 µmol/L）treating for 24，48，72 h on the two kinds of cells. Two kinds of cells were divided into control group and administration group （DHA，25 µmol/L），and then cultured with drug-free or drug-containing medium for 24 h，operated in parallel for three times. After derivatization of cell samples in each group ，GC-MS method was used to detect the content of amino acid metabolites ，combined with SIMCA-P software analysis and compound library comparison ，the differential metabolites in two kinds of cells were screened out. The pathway enrichment analysis of differential metabolism was conducted with Metaboanalyst 4.0 software. RESULTS ：Compared with control group ，the contents of glutamine ，glutathione， phenylalanine，fumaric acid and taurine were trending down in Huh 7 or BEL- 7402 cells. There were 28 and 29 differential metabolites obtained from the above two kinds of cells ，and 10 of them were common differential metabolites ，including glutamine，glutathione，taurine，fumaric acid ，phenylalanine，etc. The differential metabolites were enriched in 8 and 6 pathways respectively. The common enrichment pathways were amino acid-tRNA biosynthesis ，aspartate-alanine-glutamate metabolism ， nitrogen metabolism ，phenylalanine metabolism and pentose phosphate pathway ，etc. CONCLUSIONS ：DHA can significantly reduce the activities of Huh 7 cells and BEL- 7402 cells，and the contents of glutamine ，glutamic acid ，glutathione and phenylalanine，etc. It may regulate the growth of the two kinds of cells by influencing the mechanism of aspartic acid- alanine-glutamate metabolic pathway ，etc.