Antitumor effects of saponin extract from Patrinia villosa (Thunb.) Juss on mice bearing U14 cervical cancer

Saponin extracted from Patrinia villosa (Thunb.) Juss (SPVJ) is a Chinese medicine which is used widely by traditional medicine doctors. In this study, the antitumor effects and the possible mechanisms of SPVJ were investigated in mice bearing U14 cervical cancer. The results showed that SPVJ (50 mg/kg and 100 mg/kg) effectively reduced the weight of U14 cervical tumor (35.1% and 57.1%, respectively). Compared with the control group, SPVJ (100 mg/kg) significantly increased tumor cells in the G0/G1 phase (38.1% vs 68.5%), increased the number of cells in apoptosis (9.4% vs 28.9%) and G0/G1 phase and decreased the number of cells in S phase (41% vs 26.2%) and G2/M (20.9% vs 5.3%), inhibited proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) of tumor cell (80.6% vs 21.8%), decreased the expression of mutant p53 (66.4% vs 33.5%) and bcl-2 protein (78.2% vs 20.3%). The mechanism of the SPVJ antitumor effect might be associated with inhibition of tumor cells in G0/G1 phase, inducing apoptosis and inhibiting the expression of PCNA, mutant P53 and Bcl-2 protein.