The apoptotic effect of methoxyflavone xanthomicrol on breast cancer cell in vitro

Introduction: The effects of flavonoids on induction of apoptosis in tumor cells have been evidenced forso long. It has been noticed that unmethoxylated flavones may exert their apoptotic effects on bothhealthy and cancer cells. However, methoxylated flavones mostly affect the cancer cells, thus performingselectively. Therefore, in the current study, the apoptotic effect of a methoxyflavone named xanthomicrolwas investigated on mouse breast cancer cells in vitro. Methods: 4T1 mouse breast cancer cells werecultured in RPMI1640 medium with 10% FBS (fetal bovine serum) for one day. Then, these cells weretreated by various amounts of flavonoid xanthomocrol (10, 50, 75, 100, 125, 150, 200µg/ml) for 24 hours.DMSO as the solvent was used in the negative sham control and the cell viability was detected by MTTtest. In addition, percentages of apoptotic cells were evaluated via FACS analysis of Annexin V-FITC andPropidium Iodide (PI) double staining. Results: Our data demonstrated that incubation of 4T1 cells withxanthomicrol resulted in the augmentation of cell death in a dose dependent manner as detected by MTTassay. The achieved IC50 concentration of xanthomicrol was 150µg/ml from three biological replicates.Moreover, Annexin/PI staining revealed that xanthomicrol (150µg/ml) could increase the percentage ofapoptotic cells approximately six times compared to the negative control group. Conclusion: It can bededuced that xanthomicrol can induce apoptosis in mouse breast cancer cells in vitro and confirming theanti-proliferative effects of this flavon in vivo would make it a good candidate as an anti-cancer supplement.