Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology

The Korean Society for Microbiology and Biotechnology (한국미생물·생명공학회)
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Cytotoxic Effect of Urushiol on Human Ovarian Cancer Cells

  • Choi, Ju-Youn (Research Institute of Molecular Genetics, Catholic Research Institute of Medical Science, College of Medicine, the Catholic University of Korea) ;
  • Park, Chang-Soo (Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Samsung Medical Center, Medical College of Sung Kyun Kwan University) ;
  • Choi, Jong-Oh (Chemical Analysis Laboratory, Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science) ;
  • Rhim, Hyang-Shuk (Research Institute of Molecular Genetics, Catholic Research Institute of Medical Science, College of Medicine, the Catholic University of Korea) ;
  • Chun, Heung-Jae (Research Institute of Biomedical Engineering)
  • Published : 2001.06.01
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Abstract

Urushiol, a natural pro-electrophilic quinone compound, has potential structural characteristics as antitumor chemotherapeutic agents. However, urushiol's use as an antitumor drug has some problems, because it is hardly miscible with an aqueous solution. Purified urushiol is highly viscous and soluble only in strong solvents. for this study, we prepared an urushiol-ethanol micro-emulsion with a unimodal size distribution by high-speed homogenization. This generated effective delivery of urushiol to its action wites, so that we could investigate its cytotoxic activity against cancer cells. Using a colony-forming assay, we were able to show that urushiol selectively inhibited the growth of the ovarian cancer cells PA-1 and 2774 at a concentration of $10^{-6}$, whereas it had only a negligible effect on normal CHO cells at the same concentration. The data suggest that urushiol may have potential as an effective antitumor agent in the treatment of ovarian cancer. In addition, we addressed the question of whether the specific cytotoxic effect of urushiol is linked to apoptosis, by DNA fragmentation and DAPI staining assays. The inhibitory effects of urushiol on the growth of ovarian cancer cells was found to be associated with DNA fragmentation and the fragmented nuclei formation, both of which represent markers for the induction of apoptosis. Therefore, the results suggested that urushiol affected its profound cytotoxicity by triggering apoptosis in ovarian cancer cells.

Keywords

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