Abstract

Ginseng as a traditional medicine is well known to exhibit various pharmacological effects. Ginsenoside Rg3 is the active ingredient extracted from ginseng. The pharmacological modulatory effects of Rg3 on multidrug resistant cancer cells are reported in the present study. Cytarabine is a chemotherapeutic agent for the treatment of acute leukemia. However, this compound has serious side effects at high doses, for example hematopoiesis depression. In this study, using hl60 human leukemia cells, we investigated the possible synergistic anti-cancer effects between ginseng extract Rg3 and cytarabine on acute myeloid leukemia cells. Results of this study demonstrate that Rg3 can enhance the anti-proliferation effect of cytarabine on hl60 cells and may decrease the dosage of cytarabine needed for acute myeloid leukemia treatment.

Keywords:

Anti-cancer, cytarabine, ginseng, leukemia,

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Competing interests

The authors have no competing interests.

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