Pinene Promotes Liver Cancer Cell Apoptosis by Regulating the Bcl-2/Bax/Caspase-3 Pathway

Abstract

This study investigated whether pinene promotes apoptosis of liver cancer cells by regulating the Bcl-2/Bax/Caspase-3 signaling pathway. In this study, the expression levels of Bcl-2/Bax/caspase-3 protein are detected by Western Blot, and this study adopts Annexin V-FITC/PI FACS to measure the cell apoptosis level and adopts vernier caliper to measure the xenograft tumor size. The paper tries to prove that pinene could enhance liver cancer cell apoptosis by up-regulating the expression level of Bax protein, down-regulating the expression level of Bcl-2 protein, and inducing the cleavage of caspase-3. This study will fill the research gap on the pinene’s curative effect on liver cancer and provide significant insight into whether people could invent new drugs that treat liver cancer effectively with pinene extracted from Artemisia argyi.