Effect of curcumin on p53 and Bax protein induction
The protein p53 plays a very important role in cell cycle arrest, and in apoptosis induced by a broad range of agents. In order to examine expression characteristics of p53 in curcumin treated MCF-7 cells we employed western blot analysis. Fig. 2A illustrates that treatment of MCF-7 cells with curcumin induced an increase in p53 levels as early as 3 h, and it reached a maximum by 6 h. In order to further understand the mechanism of curcumin-induced p53 mediated apoptosis in MCF-7 cells, we examined the expression of downstream targets of p53 including Bax and p21. It can be observed in Fig. 2C that Bax initially increases by 3 h following curcumin treatment and maximizing by 12 h. On the other hand, p21 expression level did not change (data not shown).