Cancer accounts for 25% of deaths in the United States, and brain tumors greatly contribute to this percentage. However, relative to other types of cancers, brain tumors prove difficult to treat because they are heterogeneous, highly proliferative, highly invasive, and resistant to the traditional cancer treatments of chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Past studies have shown that flavonoids and curcuminoids, two classes of compounds derived from natural sources, are effective in inhibiting the development and metastasis of breast and lung cancer cells. Research has also indicated that these compounds have potential for treating brain tumors.
The purpose of this research is to further explore the potential of flavonoids as therapeutic options for the treatment of brain tumors. Specifically, flavonoids’ effect on cell proliferation, cell death, and tumor invasion will be studied. Another objective of this study is to identify the signaling mechanism by which flavonoids mediate their therapeutic effects on brain tumor cell lines. Three human brain tumor cell lines (U-1242, U-251, and U-87) will be studied. They will be treated with various flavonoids at increasing concentrations (10, 20, 40, and 80 µM). Cells will be counted following the trypan blue staining protocol. MTT assays and Western blot analyses will be used to assess cell proliferation. Cell death will be assessed with flow analyses and Western blot analyses. Unpaired t-tests will be run to compare treated and control cells at a 95% confidence interval. If necessary, one-way ANOVA with multiple comparisons will be used to compare multiple treatment groups and a control at a 95% confidence interval, and the Tukey post-hoc test will be utilized if appropriate. All statistical tests will be run in IBM SPSS 21®
