Ethanol Extract of Asiasari Radix Preferentially Induces Apoptosis in G361 Human Melanoma Cells by Differential Regulation of p53

The 2019 study by Park et al. explored the effects of an ethanol extract of Asiasari radix (ARE) on G361 human melanoma cells compared to HaCaT human keratinocyte cell lines. The research demonstrated that ARE significantly inhibited the growth of G361 melanoma cells by inducing apoptosis through a caspase-3-mediated pathway, which was not observed in the non-cancerous HaCaT cells. This apoptotic effect in the melanoma cells was linked to a decrease in the levels of p53 and p21 proteins, regulated by reactive oxygen species (ROS). In contrast, ARE treatment resulted in an increase in p53 and p21 expression in HaCaT cells. Additionally, microarray analysis showed that ARE differentially regulated the expression of genes related to apoptosis, such as MDM2 and CFLAR, in the two cell lines. The study concluded that ARE could be a potential therapeutic agent for melanoma due to its selective induction of apoptosis in melanoma cells via a ROS-dependent mechanism that alters the regulation of p53. The experiments were conducted with a sample size of n = 3 for each test condition.