Download Studying the Cytotoxicity Effect of Chalcone Derivative

Studying the Cytotoxicity Effect of Chalcone Derivative Compounds on PC3/SKP2 Cancer Cells
Timmy Huynh, Maggie Wu, Josie Vo
Mentor: Xiaolin Zi
Prostate cancer has been one of the most commonly diagnosed cancers in males in America. To address this
issue, a drug component known as Chalcone was investigated to study its potential use of preventing prostate
cancer growth. Previous in vitro studies that have used synthesized Chalcone on panels of prostate cancer cell
lines show that these compounds inhibit the proliferation of cells by inducing apoptosis and blocking cell
cycle progression. In this experiment, Chalcone drug treatment was performed on a prostate cancer cell line
known as PC3, over-expressing either pcDNA3 (negative control) or SKP2 (S-phase kinase-associated
protein 2, E3 ubiquitin protein ligase) protein. The goal of this project was to find compounds that would
significantly target cells with SKP2 expression. The selective toxicity of Chalcone drugs was quantified using
tetrazolium dye-based MTT assays of the two cell lines. These cell lines were cultured periodically, treated
with various Chalcone derivative compounds, and analyzed via MTT assays to measure the cell viability after
treatment. After screening a collection of different Chalcone derivatives, there were several compounds that
had a slightly higher affinity towards the PC3-SKP2 than the PC3-pcDNA3 cells. This shows that there is a
possibility that certain Chalcone compounds can be more effective towards SKP2 expressed cells. The
specificity of the few successful Chalcone derivative compounds shows that there is promise in future
development of Chalcone drugs as a possible treatment of Prostate cancer.