St. John's Worth Extract Induces Apoptosis and Inhibits Cancer-Related Inflamation in Basal Cell Carcinoma Cell Lines

Basal Cell Carcinoma (BCC) is the most commonly diagnosed skin cancer in the world. It can be treated through standard surgical excision in most of the patients, but some patients can not be tolerate surgical procedures; therefore, it should be used non-surgical treatment for these kinds of patients. St. John's worth/Hypericum perforatum (HP) plant has biological active contents and is also used by local people in treatment of some diseases. The content of HP affects apoptosis. Apoptotic pathways are significant in cancer development and chemotherapeutic resistance. Furthermore, it is reported that anti-inflammatory agents are a potential target for cancer. Thus, we studied if HP extract affects apoptotic pathways mediators; caspase-3, bax, bcl-2, gadd153, grp78, AIF and cell cycle G2/M checkpoint kinase; wee 1, and also inflammation mediators; iNOS, COX-2, cPLA2, NFkB expression in treated BCC cells. Human basal cancer cell lines were obtained from ATCC, then were grown on Dulbecco's Modified Eagle's Medium (DMEM). Cell viability assay and cell homogenization were performed. One of the two BCC cell lines was given HP extract, whereas the other was not given. Then their activity of apoptotic pathways, cell cycle, inflammation mediators were analyzed by ELISA in these cultured cells. The data were analyzed statistically. It was detected that HP extract treatment increased expression of caspase-3, bax, gadd153, grp78, AIF apoptotic proteins and cell cycle G2/M checkpoint kinase- wee 1 although it decreased bcl-2 antiapoptotic protein and iNOS, COX-2, cPLA2, NFkB inflammatory mediators in BCC cells. In this study, it is asserted that HP extract will be able to affect in the treatment of BCC due to characteristic feature of anti-inflammatory and wiping out cancer cells by affecting several intracellular pathways.