Sodium dichloroacetate improves radiosensitivity of U251 cells

AIM: To study the change of radiosensitivity of U251 cells after treated with sodium dichloroacetate (DCA) and further to explore the possible mechanism.METHODS: The U251 cells were divided into 4 groups: control group, DCA group, X-ray irradiation without DCA pretreatment (IR) group and X-ray irradiation with DCA pretreatment (DIR) group. MTT assay was applied to determine the cell viability. The intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) were detected by DHE fluorescence. The expression level of Bcl-2 was assessed by Western blot. The percentage of apoptosis of cells was determined by flow cytometry. RESULTS: No difference between control group and DCA group in cell viability (P>0.05) was observed. However, the cell viability of both IR group and DIR group was markedly reduced compared with control group (P<0.05). Furthermore, the viability of DIR group was significantly decreased compared with IR group (P<0.05). The percentage of ROS positive cells was obviously increased in DIR group compared with IR group (P<0.05). The expression level of Bcl-2 was sharply decreased in DIR group (P<0.05) and the percentage of apoptosis of cells was significantly elevated (P<0.05) in DIR group compared with IR group.CONCLUSION: The better antitumor effect was obtained by improving the radiosensitivity through pretreating the cells with DCA, and the possible mechanism was down-regulation of the Bcl-2 expression by developing the intracellular ROS.