Study of Ethanol-induced Apoptosis in Hepatoma HCC-9204 Cells

Objective To explore the apoptosis inducing effect of ethanol on heptocellular carcinoma(HCC) cells and establish the model of ethanol induced apoptosis in HCC cells.Methods The cytotoxic effect of 2%-10% ethanol on HCC cell line HCC 9204 was detected by thiazolyl blue(MTT)assay.Then,apoptosis in HCC 9204 cells was induced with 6% ethanol for 6 h.The morphological change,DNA breakage and the change of DNA content of the apoptotic cells in different cell cycles were detected by Transmission electronic microscope,Terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase mediated dUTP nick end labeling (TUNEL)assay and flow cytometry.Results The higher the concentration of ethanol was,the stronger the cytotoxicity on HCC 9204 cells was. 6% ethanol could lead to obviously morphological apoptotic changes in HCC 9204 cells,most of the cells were TUNEL positive,and obviously apoptotic sub G1 peak was found by flow cytometry.Conclusion The model of ethanol induced apoptosis in HCC 9204 cells was established successfully and the low ancentration of ethanol can induce it's apoptosis.