Selective antiproliferative and apoptotic effects of quercetin in normal versus tumorigenic hepatic cell lines

Quercetin is a dietary anticancer chemical that is capable of inducing apoptosis in tumor cells. However, little is known about its biological effect in nonmalignant hepatic cells. Using embryonic normal hepatic cell line (BNL CL.2) and its SV40-transformed tumorigenic cell line (BNL SV A.8), we evaluated the effects of quercetin on cell proliferation and apoptosis. As the results, our present study demonstrated that quercetin had a selective growth inhibition in normal versus tumorigenic hepatic cells such that BNL SV A.8 cells were very sensitive to the quercetin-mediated cytotoxicity. In particular, as evidenced by the increased number of positively stained cells in the TUNEL assay, the induction of characteristic nuclear DNA ladders, and the migration of many cells to sub-G1 phase in the BNL SV A.8 cells, quercetin treatment more sensitively induced apoptosis in BNL SV A.8 cells than in BNL CL.2 cells. Collectively, our findings suggest that quercetin can be approached as a potential agent that is capable of inducing selective growth inhibition and apoptosis of hepatic cancer cells.