Odor: characteristic

Use: Costunolide exhibited cytotoxicity against human A549, SK-OV-3, SK-MEL-2, and HCT15 tumor cells. It showed potent inhibitory effects on the IBMX-induced melanogenesis, in dose-dependent manners, with IC50 values of 3 µg/mL. Costunolide induces the ROS-mediated mitochondrial permeability transition and resultant cytochrome c release. This is the first report on the mechanism of the anti-cancer effect of costunolide. Costunolide (CTN), together with parthenolide (PTN) by its strong inhibition of LPS-induced NF-?B activation. CTN, which showed more potent inhibition than PTN in the NF-?B activation, strongly suppressed nitric oxide (NO) production in LPS-stimulated RAW 264.7 cells. RT-PCR and Western blot analyses demonstrated that CTN suppressed the expression of iNOS mRNA and protein in a dose-dependent manner. CTN also significantly inhibited LPS-induced DNA-binding activity of NF-?B as well as the LPS-induced degradation of I?B-a and -β. Furthermore, CTN inhibited LPS-induced phosphorylation of I?B-a. These findings support that CTN inhibits NO production by down-regulating iNOS expression, at least, in part through the inhibition of I?Bs' phosphorylation and degradation, which are essential for the activation of NF-?B.