World J Gastroenterol. 2003 Apr; 9(4): 670-3.

Effects of astragali radix on the growth of different cancer cell lines.

Lin J, Dong HF, Oppenheim JJ, Howard OM.

Deportment of Gastroenterology, Shuguang Hospital, Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Shanghai, 200021, China. lin_jiang@hotmail.com

AIM: To investigate the inhibitory effect of a Chinese herb medicine Astragali radix (AR) on growth of different cancer cell line. METHODS: To observe the in vitro effects of AR on tumor cell proliferation by trypan blue exclusion, MTS method and tritium thymidine incorporation assay. Apoptosis was detected by DNA ladder method. RESULTS: The inhibition rates of AR on the cell respiration of AGS, KATOIII, HT29, MDA231, MEL7 and MEL14 were 68.25 %, 62.36 %, 22.8 %, 27.69 %, 2.85 % and 5.14 % respectively at the concentration of 100 ug/ml; it inhibited AGS DNA synthesis by 87.33 % at the concentration of 50 ug/ml. The inhibitory effect on AGS was time-and dose-dependent. AR did not induce apoptosis in AGS cells. CONCLUSION: AR specifically inhibits gastric cancer cells growth in vitro and the mechanism is mainly cytostatic but not cytotoxic or inducing apoptosis.