The Molecular Basis of Wound Healing Processes Induced by Lithospermi Radix: A Proteomics and Biochemical Analysis
Figure 1
Effects of LR extracts and shikonin on human fibroblast cell viability. The graphs represent the ratio of viability of fibroblast cells treated with various concentrations of LR extracts or shikonin using cells treated with DMSO as the control. (a) LR extract was toxic to fibroblasts in a dose-dependent manner at higher concentrations and reaches the IC50 at the concentration of 250 μg/mL. In contrast to the above toxicity, concentrations lower than 50 μg/mL promoted cell viability. It should be noted that 20 μg/mL of LR extracts were the optimal concentration for promoting cell viability, which gave an increase in the cell viability of more than 25%. Moreover, shikonin had a similar effect on cell viability (b), and the IC50 for fibroblasts was found to be about 3000 nM for shikonin. It was found the viability of fibroblasts was increased by >20% at 100 nM shikonin. Fibroblasts were seeded into a 24-well plate using 4 × 104 cells per well. After the cells had attached, the designated drug concentration was used to treat the cells for 24 h. Cell viability was evaluated by the WST-1 assay, and the cell density was measured by spectrophotometer at OD450-OD690. It should be noted that fibroblasts treated with 0.5% of DMSO was used as the control. The Student’s -test was used to evaluate the statistical significance of the results, which is presented as mean ± SD (). *; **, compared with the control.
