Figure 13. 6-MITC inhibits HL-60 and Jurkat cell proliferation via modulating molecular pathways involved in differentiation, cell cycle progression and apoptosis.

The 6-MITC induced apoptosis on transformed cells results statistically significant at 24 h and dose and time related. Moreover apoptosis is triggered by an extrinsic pathway increasing activated caspase-8 level (orange arrows). 6-MITC is able to limit tumour growth by slowing down the cell cycle of Jurkat cells after 24 h treatment and it blocks HL-60 cell cycle by modulating Cyclin D3 expression level after 48 and 72 h (red arrow). Finally, 6-MITC showed the ability to induce cytodifferentiation of promielocytic HL-60 cells into macrophage and granulocytic phenotypes after 72 h treatment (purple arrow).