Cancer Letters
Volume 295, Issue 1 , Pages 44-53, 1 September 2010

Lunasin promotes apoptosis in human colon cancer cells by mitochondrial pathway activation and induction of nuclear clusterin expression

  • Vermont P. Dia
    • ,
  • Elvira Gonzalez de Mejia

      Affiliations

    • Corresponding Author InformationCorresponding author. Address: Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, 228 ERML, MC-051, 1201 West Gregory Drive, Urbana, IL 61801, USA. Tel.: +1 217 244 3196; fax: +1 217 265 0925.

Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, University of Illinois, at Urbana-Champaign, IL 61801, USA

Received 8 January 2010; received in revised form 10 February 2010; accepted 11 February 2010. published online 08 March 2010.

Abstract 

Lunasin is a naturally occurring peptide with arginine–glycine–aspartic acid motif associated to its reported biological activity. We aimed to determine the potential of lunasin from soybean to stimulate apoptosis in HT-29 colon cancer cells. Lunasin caused cytotoxicity to HT-29 cells and induced G2/M cell cycle arrest with simultaneous increased in p21 expression. Lunasin-induced apoptosis as evidenced by a twofold increase in the percentage of cells undergoing apoptosis, decreased Bcl-2:Bax ratio from 8.5 to 0.4, increased caspase-3 activity by 77% and increased expression of pro-apoptotic nuclear clusterin by five fold when compared to untreated cells. In conclusion, lunasin stimulated apoptosis in HT-29 cells by activating apoptotic mitochondrial pathways and inducing expression of the pro-apoptotic nuclear clusterin.

Keywords: Lunasin, Clusterin, Colorectal cancer, Apoptosis

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PII: S0304-3835(10)00098-4

doi:10.1016/j.canlet.2010.02.010

Cancer Letters
Volume 295, Issue 1 , Pages 44-53, 1 September 2010

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