Gastric Carcinoma Cell Line SGC-7901 by Inhibiting mTOR Axis Phosphorylation

Vitamin E succinate (VES), a potential cancer therapeutic agent, potently induces apoptosis and inhibits the growth of various cancer cells. Autophagy has been supposed to promote can-cer cell survival or trigger cell death, depending on particular cancer types and tumor microen-vironments. The role of autophagy in the growth suppressive effect of VES on gastric cancer cell is basically unknown. We aimed to determine whether and how autophagy affected the VES-induced inhibition of SGC-7901 human gastric carcinoma cell growth. SGC-7901 cells were treated with VES or pre-treated with autophagy inhibitor, chloroquine (CQ) and 3-methy-ladenine (3-MA). Electron microscopy, fluorescence microscopy andWestern blot were used to study whether VES induced autophagy reaction in SGC-7901 cells. Western blot evaluated the activities of themammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) axis. Then we used 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) and flow cytometry to detect the level of cell viability and apoptosis. Collectively, our data indeed strongly support our hypothe-sis that VES treatment produced cytological variations that depict autophagy, increased the amount of intracellular green fluorescent protein—microtubule associated protein 1 light chai