Research Article The Mechanisms of Chansu in Inducing Efficient Apoptosis in

Copyright © 2013 Chun Li 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. Chansu is one of themost widely used traditional Chinesemedicines inChina, Japan, and other Southeast Asian countries primarily for antipain, anti-inflammation, and recently anticancer. Over 10 recipes and remedies contained Chansu, which are easily available in pharmacies and hospitals, but themechanisms of actionwere not clearly articulated. In the present study, Cinobufagin (CBF), the major compound of Chansu, was employed as a surrogatemarker to determine its ability in inducing cancer cell death. As expected, CBF has significant cancer-killing capacity for a range of cancers, but such ability differs markedly. Colon and prostate cancers are more sensitive than skin and lung cancers. Interestingly, cancer cells die through apoptotic pathway either being biphasic caspase-3-dependent (HCT116) or independent (HT29). Multipathway analysis reveals that CBF-induced apoptosis is likely modulated by the hypoxia-inducing factor-1 alpha subunit (HIF-