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The Herbal Medicine Sho-saiko-to Inhibits Proliferation of Cancer Cell Lines by Inducing Apoptosis and Arrest at the G⁰/G¹ Phase¹

The First Department of Pathology, Kurume University School of Medicine, Kurume-shi 830, Japan

² To whom requests for reprints should be addressed, at The First Department of Pathology, Kurume University School of Medicine, 67 Asahi-machi, Kurume-shi 830, Japan.

Water-soluble ingredients of the herbal medicine sho-saiko-to dose-dependently inhibited the proliferation of a human hepatocellular carcinoma cell line (KIM-1) and a cholangiocarcinoma cell line (KMC-1). Fifty % effective doses on day 3 of exposure to sho-saiko-to were 353.5 ± 32.4 µg/ml for KIM-1 and 236.3 ± 26.5 µg/ml for KMC-1. However, almost no suppressive effects were detected in normal human peripheral blood lymphocytes or normal rat hepatocytes. Sho-saiko-to suppressed the proliferation of the carcinoma cell lines significantly more strongly than did each of its major ingredients, i.e., saikosaponin a, c, and d, ginsenoside Rb₁ and Rg₁, glycyrrhizin, baicalin, baicalein, and wogonin, or another herbal medicine, juzen-taiho-to (P < 0.05 or 0.005). Because such ingredients are barely soluble in water, there could be synergistic or additive effects of the ingredients in sho-saiko-to. Morphological, DNA, and cell cycle analyses revealed two possible modes of action of sho-saiko-to to suppress the proliferation of carcinoma cells; (a) it induces apoptosis in the early period of exposure and (b) it induces arrest at the G₀/G₁ phase in the late period of exposure.

¹ This study was supported in part by the Sarah Cousins Memorial Fund (Boston, MA).

The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the payment of page charges. This article must therefore be hereby marked advertisement in accordance with 18 U.S.C. Section 1734 solely to indicate this fact.

Received 4/22/93. Accepted 11/ 5/93.

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