Cytotoxicity and modes of action of 4'-hydroxy-2',6'-dimethoxychalcone and other flavonoids toward drug-sensitive and multidrug-resistant cancer cell lines.

Abstract Introduction Resistance of cancer to chemotherapy is a main cause in treatment failure. Naturally occurring chalcones possess a wide range of biological activities including anti-cancer effects. In this work, we evaluated the antiproliferative activity of three chalcones [4′-hydroxy-2′,6′-dimethoxychalcone ( 1 ), cardamomin ( 2 ), 2′,4′-dihydroxy-3′,6′-dimethoxychalcone ( 3 )], and four flavanones [( S )-(–)-pinostrobin ( 4 ), ( S )-(–)-onysilin ( 5 ) and alpinetin ( 6 )] toward nine cancer cell lines amongst which were multidrug resistant (MDR) types. Methods The resazurin reduction assay was used to detect the antiproliferative activity of the studied samples whilst flow cytometr…