Yusra Zarlashat 1, Alia Ambreen1, Muhammad Zubair Zafar 2,*, Hassan Mushtaq 3, 4, Bushra Munir 5, Muhammad Mujahid 1 and Abdul Ghaffar 1,*
1Department of Biochemistry, Government College University Faisalabad, Faisalabad, Pakistan 2Faisalabad Medical University, Allied Hospital Faisalabad, Pakistan 3Health Biotechnology Division, National Institute for Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering-C (NIBGE), Faisalabad, Pakistan 4Pakistan Institute of Engineering and Applied Sciences (PIEAS), Islamabad, Pakistan 5Department of Chemistry, University of Sargodha, Sargodha, Pakistan
*Corresponding authors: aghaffaruaf@yahoo.com (AG); zafarzubairrana@gmail.com (MZZ)
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a serious health issue, and its prevalence is rapidly growing throughout the world. The expression in genes of cell signaling pathways has been correlated with HCC. This study explores the effect of doxorubicin and paclitaxel in preventing HCC. The effect of these drugs was evaluated on selective proteins in the hepatoma cell line. The Huh-7 cell line was cultured in Dulbecco’s Modified Eagles Medium and treated with doses of doxorubicin and paclitaxel. The effect of these drugs on selected genes was evaluated through changes in mRNA level. The up and downregulation was determined by quantifying mRNA levels after cDNA synthesis and qPCR analysis. This study demonstrated that the doxorubicin promoted p53-DNA binding, which causes cells to undergo apoptosis. The paclitaxel drug arrests the cell cycle to increase the apoptosis rate by activating or phosphorylating the apoptotic proteins and hindering the antiapoptotic proteins. The CT values of the RT-PCR presented that the relative expression of selective oncogenes and growth factors involved in RAS/RAF pathway were downregulated upon the treatment of anti-cancerous doxorubicin and paclitaxel drug.