A comprehensive anticancer molecular study for genistein the promising anticancer drug

Abstract

Objective Genistein a potent isoflavonoid isolated from dietary soybean with a wide range of biological and therapeutic activities, particularly, in cancer prevention. The molecular mechanism that explains this powerful chemopreventive activity is still not fully understood. The study designed to give a clear and complete picture about this mechanism using a flow cytometry analysis and a quantitative real-time PCR to investigate 16 gene families for 1023 genes.
Methods Human cervical cancer cells were treated with genistein IC 50 for 48 h. Cell-cycle arrest and apoptosis induction were investigated using flow cytometry analysis. The high-throughput quantitative PCR array was used to explore the up- and down-regulated genes affected by the treatment.
Results The quantitative real-time PCR analysis demonstrated the up- and down-regulation to 11 cancer-related gene families due to genistein treatment. Most of the up- and down-regulated genes have a role in cell proliferation, DNA replication and cell cycle progress. These findings were in harmony with the flow cytometry analysis in which a significant increase was manifested in the apoptotic cells (P < 0.05) of the treated cell cultures (18.34%) when compared with untreated cell cultures (5.7%).
Conclusion The results highly pointed on the importance of genistein as promising anticancer drug. A comprehensive map regarding the anticancer molecular mechanism of this natural compound was given and many new therapeutic targets to control cancer development were uncovered.
Keywords genistein, anticancer, cervical cancer, flavonoids