Beauvericin Inhibits the Growth of U251 Glioma Cells and Promotes Apoptosis In Vitro

Abstract

To elucidated the inhibitory effect of beauvericin (BEA) on glioma cells and its possible molecular mechanism, in this study, the MTT assay was performed to observed the effect of BEA on cell proliferation, the flow cytometry was used to measure its protective effect on cell apoptosis, and the Western Blot assay was performed to test the expression levels of signal transduction proteins. In the results, the concentration of BEA was 0.5 μmoL/L in the drug group, indicating that it has obvious protect effect to the U251 cells. The apoptosis rates of BEA, Cis and BEA+Cis groups, compared with the U251 group, were 2.93, 3.71 and 5.0 times higher respectively. In addition, the expression levels of Cyclin D1, E, B and Bcl-2 in BEA group were 75, 69, 78 and 67% of that in the U251 group, while Bax and cleaved caspase-3 were twice as much as that in the U251 group. In conclusion, beauvericin can inhibit U251 cell apoptosis and the possible mechanism is to reduce the expression of Cyclin D1, B, E and Bcl-2, while the levels of Bax and cleaved Caspase-3 increased. Thus, BEA has a broad application prospect in the treatment of glioma.