| dc.description.abstract | Neuroblastoma (NB) is the most common extracranial solid tumor in children, which originates from the sympathetic nervous system and is more likely to occur in the ganglion of the abdominal cavity and the adrenal gland. After decades of investigation, the survival rate of high-risk NB patients is still less than 50%, even with advanced therapies. This indicates that existing drugs are not effective enough to cure patients, therefore, the development of new drugs to treat NB is urgently needed. Our previous study found that the expression of aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR) was positively correlated with the differentiation histology of NB tumors. AHR overexpression can inhibit the proliferation of NB cells by promoting their differentiation. In addition, AHR activation by a ligand can also achieve a similar therapeutic effect to that of AHR overexpression, indicating that AHR ligands have therapeutic potential for NB. Therefore, in this study, I would like to investigate whether compound Y, a novel ligand of AHR, has a proliferation-inhibiting effect on NB. To this end, SK-N-BE and SK-N-SH NB cells were treated with compound Y. By the cell counting experiments, I found that the number of cells in the group treated with high concentrations of compound Y was significantly reduced. The results of MTS analysis also showed similar results, compound Y effectively reduced cell viability, showing that cell proliferation was inhibited. In addition, in the colony formation assay, it can also be observed that a high concentration of compound Y reduced the cell colony formation. Cell cycle analysis also found that compound Y induces cell arrest in G0/G1 phase. On the other hand, since previous studies have pointed out that the activation of AHR signaling pathways contributes to NB′s differentiation, compound Y′s effects in promoting cell differentiation were observed in this study. By observing the morphology change and the mRNA expression of differentiation markers TUJ1, NSE, and NF-H, I suggest that compound Y has the ability to induce differentiation of NB cells. Lastly, through Annexin V-FITC staining, it was preliminarily confirmed that compound Y also has the property of promoting apoptosis of NB cells. In conclusion, this study has confirmed that compound Y inhibits the proliferation of NB by using various research methods. | en_US |