Light-activated hypericin induces cellular destruction of nasopharyngeal carcinoma cells

✍ Scribed by C.S. Xu; A.W.N. Leung

• Book ID: 102449659
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 256 KB
• Volume: 7
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1612-2011
• DOI: 10.1002/lapl.200910095

✦ Synopsis

Hypericin from Hypericum perforatum plants shows an important promise in the photodynamic therapy on malignant tumor. The present study investigated that light-activated hypericin induced the cellular destruction of nasopharyngeal carcinoma cells. The result showed that hypericin resulted in a drugand light-dose dependent cytotoxicity in the CNE-2 cells, meaning the photocytotoxicity of hypericin depends on both of the drug concentration (0 -2.5 μM) and light-doses (1 -8 J/cm 2 ). We further investigated the apoptosis of the CNE-2 cells 8 hours after photosensitization of hypericin using fluorescence microscopy with Hoechst 33258 staining. Flow cytometry with annexin V-FITC and PI staining was used to analyze early and late apoptosis. These data demonstrated that light-activated hypericin could significantly lead to the cellular destruction of the CNE-2 cells and induce early apoptosis as a prominent mode of cell death.