A time-course profiling of the effects of maslinic acid on mRNA expression of chemically induced Raji cells.

Maslinic acid is a novel phytochemical reported to exert prominent anti-cancer effects and it was hypothesized that this compound induces cellular apoptosis through the activation of the mitochondrial apoptotic pathway (Martin et al, 2007) — thereby resulting in significant inhibition of cell proliferation in a dose-dependent manner (Reyes-Zurita et al, 2009). Prior studies on maslinic acid in its function as a time-dependent inhibitor in both tumorigenesis and inflammation events by targeting multiple signaling pathways; particularly the NF-ĸB, MAPK (Li et al, 2010; Yap, et al, 2011) and JNK (Reyes-Zurita et al, 2011) pathways were mostly based on proteomic analyses (Li et al, 2010; Yap et. al., 2011). However, these results may not depict an accurate scenario of the signaling networks involved due to protein degradation, alternate splicing and extensive post-translational processing. Hence, this study aimed to construct a temporal-based global gene expression profile of the effects of maslinic acid by using the microarray technology. The aim of this project is to construct the complete global mRNA profile of the effects of maslinic acid in inhibiting early-antigen formation in Raji cells. Phorbol ester and sodium butyrate induced Raji cells were first treated with maslinic acid and the cells were harvested at the 0th, 4th, 8th, 12th, 24th, 48th hour. Total RNA was extracted and its mRNA was subsequently isolated for hybridization on Affymetrix microarray. The experiment was done in triplicates per sample.