Furanocoumarin A, A Novel Anticancer Agent on Human Lung Cancer A549 Cells, from Fructus Liquidambaris.

The fruit of Fructus Liquidambaris, which is recently being used for the cancer treatment, has a history to be been used as a traditional medicine in China for thousands of years.10kg of dried F. Liquidambaris was extracted with 70% alcohol-water solution under reflux for three times. The condensed extract was extracted with petroleum ether, ethyl acetate and N-butyl alcohol, respectively. Ethyl acetate extract was subjected to silica gel column, sephadex LH-20, ODS column chromatography and RP-HPLC column chromatography to yield a new compound (1). The structure was identified through intensive analysis of NMR and MS spectra. Antitumor mechanism of the furanocoumarin A on human lung cancer A549 cells was confirmed by detecting the apoptosis related proteins.Furanocoumarin A (1), a novel furanocoumarin constituent was isolated and identified from F. Liquidambaris. The IC50 value of furanocoumarin A on A549 cell lines was 65.28±5.36μM by the method of MTT. The compound could induce the apoptosis of A549 cells by inducing 21.5% early apoptosis and 32.4% late apoptosis at the concentration of 60μmol/L. Western blot analysis indicated that protein expressions of p53, caspase 3 and Bax increased in a dose-dependent manner between the concentrations from 40 to 80μM. The protein expression of Bcl-2 decreased in the concentration of 60 and 80μM. The ratio of Bcl-2 to Bax was inversely proportional to the dose concentration.Furanocoumarin A could be a novel anticancer agent from the herbal medicine.