Terminalia bellerica (baheda) inhibits protective autophagy and induces apoptosis in oral cancer cell lines

Abstract

Cancer is a dreadful disease being one of the leading causes of death throughout the world. It has been estimated that about 8.2 million deaths in 2012 is caused by cancer only. In India oral cancer is the most common cancer prevailing among the individuals irrespective of their socio-economic status. There are many causes of oral cancer with many complex mechanisms of their originality and functionality. Among many mechanisms of cancer proliferation, metastasis and their drug resistance capacity, deregulations in the cell death mechanism is one. There are three types of cell death machinery and these are apoptosis, autophagy and necrosis. The complex interplay of autophagy or apoptosis with tumor cells has been reported by many scientists which are rather very confusing and also contradictory form one type of cancer to another. In this study there the aim is to find out potential anticancerous property in a fruit Terminalia bellerica and its cytotoxic effects on oral cancer cells. Two cell lines : FADU and Hep 2 are taken for the study . Various tests have been performrd in this study to detect the apoptotic, autophagic and DNA damaging properties of T. bellerica and the results shows that it has potential anticancerous properties which can inhibit protevtive autophagy and promotes apoptosis in Hep 2.