NTERA-2

Glyasperin A from Macaranga indica Presents Promising Capacities Against NTERA-2 Cancer Stem Cells

Glyasperin A is a flavonoid that was isolated from the leaves of Macaranga indica Wight, Euphorbiaceae, a Vietnamese traditional herbal medicine. This compound has been proven to have potential anticancer properties. However, its impact on cancer stem cells has not been identified.

Mai et al. tested the cytotoxicity potential of glyasperin A against the NTERA-2 pluripotent human embryonal carcinoma cell line. As shown in Fig. 1, the cytotoxicity of glyasperin A is dose-dependent. For NTERA-2, glyasperin A at the concentrations of 20 µM and 100 µM strictly inhibited the cell viability compared with the negative control. The NTERA-2 cell viability slightly increased when the concentration of the compound decreased to 4 µM. However, the proportion of cell growth was still lower than 50%. In contrast, the cytotoxicity of GLA on HEK-293A cells was less than that on NTERA-2 at all tested concentrations. Notably, the IC₅₀ value for NTERA-2 cells treated with glyasperin A was 2 ± 0.009 µM, while this value for HEK-293A cells was 6.4 ± 0.09 µM. These findings proposed that the NTERA-2 cell line seemed to be more sensitive to glyasperin A than the HEK-293A cell line.

Thymoquinone Affected the Proliferation and Colony Formation Ability of NTERA-2 Cells

Thymoquinone (TQ), the main active constituent of N. sativa, is reported to have anticancer activity. However, the anticancer effects of TQ on the cancer stem cell-like cells are not known. In the present study, the anti-proliferative effect and apoptosis-inducing capacity of TQ in human embryonal carcinoma cells (NTERA-2) and peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) were assessed. TQ significantly inhibited the proliferation of NTERA-2 cells (IC₅₀: 1.282, 1.167 and 0.984 µg/mL at 24, 48 and 72 hours respectively) (Fiig. 2). Paclitaxel used as positive control exhibited IC₅₀ values of 4.97, 1.66 and 0.592 µg/mL at 24, 48 and 72 hours, respectively. Paclitaxel and TQ were less toxic in PBMCs (Fig. 2). TQ significantly decreased the colony formation of NTERA-2 in dose-dependent manner in comparison with the controls (Fig. 3A), where as cells treated with Paclitaxel did not form any colonies (0%) (Fig. 3B). These TQ-treated single cells completely lost the ability of division and proliferation, which is a hallmark of potent inhibition of NTERA-2 to form colonies.