Antihepatocellular Carcinoma Potential of Tetramethylpyrazine Induces Cell Cycle Modulation and Mitochondrial-Dependent Apoptosis: Regulation of p53 Signaling Pathway in HepG2 Cells In Vitro

Tetramethylpyrazine (TMP) was originally isolated from a traditional Chinese herbal medicine, Ligusticum chuanxiong. In the present study, TMP exhibits potent antitumor activities in vitro. However, the molecular mechanisms remain to be defined. Hence, this study aims to investigate the antiproliferative and apoptotic effects of TMP on HepG2 and elucidate the underlying mechanisms. Analyses using Cell Counting Kit-8 and real-time cell analyzer indicated that TMP significantly inhibited HepG2 cell proliferation. We also observed that TMP induced cell cycle arrest at the G0/G1 checkpoint and apoptosis, using flow cytometry and high-content screening. Furthermore, our results predicted that TMP could directly decrease mitochondrial membrane potential (m), increase the release of cytochrome c, and increase caspase activation, indicating that mitochondrial pathway apoptosis could be the mechanism for TMP within HepG2 cells. Moreover, TMP altered expression of p53 and the Bcl-2/Bax protein ratio, which revealed that TMP induced cell cycle arrest and caspase-dependent mitochondrial apoptosis in HepG2 cells in vitro. These studies provided mechanistic insights into the antitumor properties of TMP, which may be explored as a potential option for treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma.