Adriamycin increased apoptosis sensitivity study of TRAIL gene on human hepatocellular carcinoma SMMC-7721 cells

To explore apoptosis sensitivity effect of the different concentration of adriamycin (ADM) combined with tumor necrosis factor-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL) gene on human hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) SMMC-7721 cells, and further explore the mechanism of apoptosis of SMMC-7721 cells. TRAIL lentivirus infected SMMC-7721 cells, and the efficiency of infection was observed by fluorescence microscopy. Expression of TRAIL gene was detected by qRT-PCR. The effect of different concentration of ADM combined with TRAIL gene on the proliferation of SMMC-7721 cells was detected by CCK8. The apoptosis of cell was detected by Hoechst 33258 and Western blot. The results of qRT-PCR showed the expression of SMMC-7721-TRAIL increased significantly (P< 0.001), and the expression of TRAIL gene in the TRAIL-NC was basically no difference (P>0.05). The results of CCK8 showed that inhibition rates of cell treated with ADM combined with TRAIL gene for 24h and 48h, compared with the control group, F=24.16, p=0.01 and F=89.43, P<0.001. Hoechst 33258 showed that ADM combined with TRAIL gene could cause chromatin condensation and nuclear fragmentation. Further studies show that the expression of DR4 and DR5 protein in cells detected by western blot was up-expression, compared with the control group, F=43.72, P=0.0144 and F=12.12, P=0.0024. ADM could increase the sensitivity of TRAIL gene and promote the apoptosis of SMMC-7721 cells, which indicates that chemotherapy drugs have broad application prospects in tumor gene therapy.