arteether exerts antitumor activity and reduces cd4+cd25+foxp3+ t-reg cells in vivo

background: chemo-immunotherapy is one of the new achievements for treatment of cancer, by which the success of anti-cancer therapy can be increased. in vitro studies have been shown that arteether (are) induces apoptosis in tumor cells, but not in normal cells. objective: to investigate the cytotoxic and immunomodulatory properties of arteether in-vivo and in-vitro. methods: in this study, we used mtt assay for evaluation of cytotoxicity of arteether on tumor cell line and peripheral blood mononuclear cells (pbmcs) from healthy individuals. balb/c mice were subcutaneously transplanted with tumor tissue taken from spontaneous mouse mammary tumor (smmt) bearing female mice. arteether was administered to breast tumor-bearing balb/c mice at a dose of 6 mg/kg/day intraperitoneally. tumor sizes, lymphocyte proliferation, cytokines production, and the percentage of splenic t-reg cells were measured. results: we observed that are could reduce the cell growth of 4t1 cell line in a dose-dependent manner but it had no cytotoxic effect on the growth of peripheral blood lymphocytes. are administered intraperitoneally to tumor-bearing balb/c mice could reduce the tumor growth rate and splenic t-reg cells. no difference in the ifn-γ, il-10 and il-4 production was observed between tumor antigenstimulated splenocytes of mice treated with are and control mice. conclusion: these results underscore antitumor properties of arteether that may aid in development of more effective antitumor agents.