Background: 4-[3,5-Bis (trimethylsilyl) benzamido] benzoic acid (TAC-101) is a novel retinobenzoic acid derivative which has a specific binding affinity to the retinoic acid receptors (RAR)alpha and RARbeta. Using time-dependent FACScan analysis, it was observed that TAC-101 induced apoptosis in a DLD-1 human colon cancer cell line. In this study, the induction of apoptosis-related proteins and the activities of caspases in a DLD-1 cell line under medication with TAC-101 were investigated.
Materials and methods: DLD-1 cells were cultured with different concentrations of TAC-101 for 12, 24 and 48 h. The expressions of Fas, TNF-R1, DR3, bcl-2, Bax and Bid were measured using a Western blot analysis. The activities of caspase-3, -8 and -9 were measured using a colorimetric protease assay kit.
Results: The Western blot analysis showed that TAC-IO1 had almost no effect on the level of Bcl-2, Bax or Bid protein. Although TAC-101 did not change the expression of TNF-R1 and DR3, TAC-101 increased the expression of Fas in both a time- and a dose-dependent manner. A 3-fold increase in caspase-3 activity and a 1.5-fold increase in caspase-8 activity were observed in cells treated with TAC-101 in comparison to the control cells (p<0.01).
Conclusion: Our data indicate that the death receptor root of the apoptotic signal transduction in DLD-1 cells mainly participates in the apoptotic induction of TAC-101. Because the compounds inducing apoptotic activity are frequent targets of cancer therapy, TAC-101 may be a good candidate for use in the treatment of colon cancer.