doi:10.1155/2012/719805 Research Article Reversion of P-Glycoprotein-Mediated Multidrug Resistance in

Copyright © 2012 Qing Xia et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Multidrug resistance (MDR) is the major obstacle in chemotherapy, which involves multiple signaling pathways. Diallyl trisulfide (DATS) is the main sulfuric compound in garlic. In the present study, we aimed to explore whether DATS could overcome P-glycoprotein-(P-gp-)mediatedMDR in K562/A02 cells, and to investigate whether NF-κB suppression is involved in DATS-induced reversal of MDR. MTT assay revealed that cotreatment with DATS increased the response of K562/A02 cells to adriamycin (the resistance reversal fold was 3.79) without toxic side effects. DATS could enhance the intracellular concentration of adriamycin by inhibiting the function and expression of P-gp, as shown by flow cytometry, RT-PCR, and western blot. In addition, DATS resulted in more K562/A02 cell apoptosis, accompanied by increased expression of caspase-3. The expression of NF-κB/p65 (downregulation) was significantly linked to the drug-resistance mechanism of DATS, whereas the expression of IκBα was not affected by DATS. Our findings demonstrated that DATS can serve as a novel, nontoxic modulator of MDR, and can reverse th