Abstract

Pancreatic cancer is one of the most lethal solid malignancies featured by rapid disease progression with no significant clinical symptoms and the treatment of pancreatic cancer remains unmet clinical need. Thus, to find a novel and potent therapeutic strategy for the treatment of pancreatic cancer is highly desired. The present study investigated the role and molecular mechanisms of cardamonin in pancreatic cancer cell line BxPC3. Cells are treated with cardamonin for 48 h and 72 h and evaluated cytotoxicity of cardamonin by 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyl tetrazolium bromide assay. Clonogenic assay was applied to observe the anti-proliferation of cardamonin in pancreatic cancer cell line BxPC3 cells. Hoechst staining and flow cytometry were used to verify the mechanism of anti-proliferation of cardamonin in pancreatic cancer cell line BxPC3 cells. The expression of apoptosis-related proteins was evaluated by western blotting to investigate the molecular mechanism of cardamonin in pancreatic cancer cell line BxPC3 cells. The results of the present study showed that cardamonin inhibited the proliferation of pancreatic cancer cell line BxPC3 cells with the half maximal inhibitory concentration value of 28.86 μM and 22.83 μM at 48 h and 72 h respectively. Moreover, cardamonin induced apoptosis in BxPC3 cells via deoxyribonucleic acid damage to inhibit the pancreatic cancer. Overall, these results suggested that cardamonin has the potential to be used as a new therapeutic approach for pancreatic cancer.