The Dietary Flavonoid Apigenin Induces Apoptosis and Cell Cycle Arrest in Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma Cells by Targeting Akt-GSK-3β-Cyclin D1 Pathway

Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) has becoming an alarming threat to the South Asian countries due to the inappropriate therapeutic discoveries to combat this disease. It has been reported that incidence of NPC is almost twenty five times higher in Southern China, as compared to the rest of the world. Although the anticancer potential of apigenin against various carcinomas were well documented, there is no report of this drug against NPC. Hence in the present study we have investigated the effect of apigenin on CNE-2 NPC cells, and also highlighted the mechanism of its action. The Akt-GSK-3 beta-Cyclin D1 signaling is reported to play important roles in the growth and proliferation of cancer cells. We observed that apigenin resulted in the significant down-regulation of p-Akt and its downstream targets p-GSK-3 beta and Cyclin D1 in CNE-2 cells.