Differential Antiproliferative Responses of Green Tea Polyphenol for Fibroblast Cell Line versus Normal Fibroblast

Abstract

The polyphenolic compounds present in green tea show antimutagenic, anti-inflammatory and antitumorigenic effects in many cell culture systems and animal tumor models. Epidemiologic studies have also suggested that green tea consumption might be effective in the prevention of certain human cancers. In this study, the differential antiproliferative responses of green tea polyphenols (GTP) were investigated in fibroblast cell line (L-929 cells, from mouse connective tissue) and normal fibroblasts (from neonatal human dermis). GTP treatment (100 μM for 24 h) resulted in significant (p < 0.05) inhibition of cell proliferation and morphological alterations with decreased local attachment, but not in normal fibroblasts. Cell cycle analysis revealed that the GTP treatment resulted in an appreciable G0/G1-phase arrest of the cell cycle in L-929 cells at 100 μM concentration, while under similar experimental conditions, no evidence of G0/G1-phase cell cycle arrest was found in normal fibroblasts at the same dose. These results suggest that antiproliferative activity of GTP may be attributed to the differential regulation of cell cycle in fibroblast cell line and normal fibroblasts, which GTP may be exploited to craft strategies for the chemoprevention and/or therapy against cancer by GTP.