Effects of Gliotoxin on Apoptosis in Cancer Cells

Apoptosis, a major form of cell death, is characterized by several unique features, including cell shrinkage, nuclear collapse, membrane blebbing, and internucleosomal DNA cleavage. Defects in apoptosis facilitate tumor progression, by rendering cancer cells resistant to death mechanisms relevant to metastasis, growth factor deprivation and chemotherapy. To date, the cervical carcinoma is the second most common cancer in women, and is one of the major causes of death among women in the world. Chondrosarcoma is a malignant primary bone tumor and the third most common primary malignancy of bone after myeloma and osteosarcoma. Thus, we chose human cervical cancer cells (Hela) and human chondrosarcoma cells (SW1353) for the study. Marine-derived fungi have proved to be a promising source of bioactive metabolites and a growing number of marine fungi have been reported to produce bioactive secondary metabolites. Several fungal metabolites isolated from Aspergillus sp. It has been shown to exert antitumor, antiinflammator, induced cytotoxicity and antibacterial activity.