anti-proliferative and apoptotic effect of tetrahydrobenzo[h]quinoline on mcf-7 human breast cancer cell

Background: quinoline and its derivatives display various biological activities based on versatility in designing a new drug class for medicinal applications. hence, synthesizing innovative and varied derivatives of quinoline has gained considerable attention among chemists and biologists. this study evaluated the anti-proliferative and apoptotic effect of tetrahydrobenzo[h]quinoline on michigan cancer foundation-7 (mcf-7) human breast cancer cells. methods: the anti-proliferative effect of tetrahydrobenzo[h]quinoline was studied via mtt [3 0-(4, 5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2, 5-diphenyl tetrazolium bromide] assays. a quantitative and qualitative study of apoptosis was carried out via flow cytometry and terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase dutp nick end labeling (tunel). quantitative real-time pcr (qpcr) and immunoblotting analysis were employed to identify the expression level of genes and proteins involved in the apoptosis signaling pathway. results: the synthesized compound reduced 50% of cell growth at concentrations of 10 and 7.5 μm during 24 and 48h, respectively, and induced apoptosis up to 30% in mcf-7 cancer cells. regarding the gene expression level, bcl-2 displayed considerable alleviation, whereas bax expression increased significantly. despite the remarkable increase in caspase 9 expression, there was no noticeable difference in the caspase 8 expression in treated cells compared to the control group. western blotting data showed that the protein expression level of bcl-2, pro-caspase 8, and 9 reduced. the protein content of bax, cleaved-caspase 8, and 9 increased significantly, of which the protein level of cleaved-caspase 9 exhibited a tremendous rise in the treated group. conclusion: the newly synthesized tetrahydrobenzo[h]quinoline can be a promising organic compound for cancer treatment if its anti-cancer effect investigates by other types of breast cancer cells. in vivo studies should be used to investigate the anti-cancer efficiency of this compound.