The Apoptotic Effect of Arsenic Compounds on MA-10 Mouse Leydig Tumor Cells.

Abstract

Arsenic is an environmental toxicant. The research has shown that long term exposure can be harmful to human body, and has been associated with some disease, such as neuropathy, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and hypertension. In addition to chronic diseases, in recent years, much evidence has revealed that long term arsenic exposure was associated with increased risks of some cancers, including skin, lung, bladder, and liver cancer, as well as others. However, some researchers surprisingly found that arsenic trioxide showed the good therapeutic effect on APL (acute promyelocytic leukemia) patients, and decrease APL cell viability. Because of the increasing incident rate of the testicular cancer, we assumed that whether arsenic might show the same efficiency in testicular cancer cells. To prove our assumption, we used MA-10 cells, a mouse Leydig tumor cell line, and treated with different concentration of sodium arsenite and dimethylarsenic acid. Our data showed that MA-10 cells appeared rounded-up and membrane blebbings in treatment with 100 µM sodium arsenite for 3 hours. Besides, MTT assay demonstrated that MA-10 cells also appeared cell death in treatment with 10 mM dimethylarsenic acid for 24 hours. In flow cytometry and western blot analysis, both treatments of sodium arsenite and dimethylarsenic acid can increase the ratio of subG1 phase and the level of the cleaved caspase-3 protein. Hence evidences showed that arsenic compounds can induce cell apoptosis not only in acute promyelocytic leukemia but also in MA-10 cells. These findings suggest that arsenic is the potential strategy of anti-cancer drug development in the testicular cancer. (poster)