Goniothalamin (GTN) isolated from Goniothalamus sp. has been demonstrated to induce apoptosis in a variety of cancer cell lines including Jurkat T leukemia cells. However, the mechanism of GTN-induced apoptosis upstream of mitochondria is still poorly defined. In this study, GTN caused a decrease in GSH with an elevation of reactive oxygen species as early as 30 min and DNA damage as assessed by Comet assay. Analysis using topoisomerase II processing of supercoiled pBR 322 DNA showed that GTN caused DNA damage via a topoisomerase II-independent pathway suggesting that cellular oxidative stress may contribute to genotoxicity. A 12-fold increase of caspase-2 activity was observed in GTN-treated Jurkat cells after 4h treatment and this was confirmed using Western blotting. Although the caspase-2 inhibitor Z-VDVAD-FMK inhibited the proteolytic activity of caspase-2, apoptosis ensued confirming that caspase-2 activity was not crucial for GTN-induced apoptosis. However, GTN-induced apoptosis was completely abrogated by N-acetylcysteine further confirming the role of oxidative stress. Since cytochrome c release was observed as early as 1h without any appreciable change in Bcl-2 protein expression, we further investigated whether overexpression of Bcl-2 confers resistance in GTN-induced cytotoxicity. Using a panel of Jurkat Bcl-2 transfectants, GTN cytotoxicity was not abrogated in these cells. In conclusion, GTN induces DNA damage and oxidative stress resulting in apoptosis which is independent of both caspase-2 and Bcl-2.
Goniothalamin, a styryllactone, has been shown to induce cytotoxicity via apoptosis in several tumor cell lines. In this study, we have examined the potential role of several genes, which were stably transfected into T-cell lines and which regulate apoptosis in different ways, on goniothalamin-induced cell death. Overexpression of full-length receptor for activated protein C-kinase 1 (RACK-1) and pc3n3, which up-regulates endogenous RACK-1, in both Jurkat and W7.2 T cells resulted in inhibition of goniothalamin-induced cell death as assessed by MTT and clonogenic assays. However, overexpression of rFau (antisense sequence to Finkel-Biskis-Reilly murine sarcoma virus-associated ubiquitously expressed gene) in W7.2 cells did not confer resistance to goniothalamin-induced cell death. Etoposide, a clinically used cytotoxic agent, was equipotent in causing cytotoxicity in all the stable transfectants. Assessment of DNA damage by Comet assay revealed goniothalamin-induced DNA strand breaks as early as 1 h in vector control but this effect was inhibited in RACK-1 and pc3n3 stably transfected W7.2 cells. This data demonstrate that RACK-1 plays a crucial role in regulating cell death signalling pathways induced by goniothalamin.