Synergistic Anticancer Effects of Artesunate with Allicin in Osteosarcoma Cells

Osteosarcoma is one of the most common malignant bone tumors in children and adolescents (Meyers et al., 1998; Bacci et al., 2000; Hauben et al., 2003; Chano et al., 2004; Marina et al., 2004; Benassi et al., 2007). The present therapeutic strategies in clinical applications have low efficiency under the current osteosarcoma therapy (Huang et al., 2012; Choeyprasert et al., 2013). Therefore, new drugs for osteosarcoma therapy are urgently needed to explore. Artesunate, is a derivative of artemisinin isolated from Artemisia annua L, has been used to treat malaria, especially against cerebral malaria (Padilla-Camberos et al., 2010; Bachmeier et al., 2011; Berdelle et al., 2011; Jin et al., 2011; Mota et al., 2011; Jiang et al., 2012; Zhou et al., 2012), new report shown that it has a variety of biological activities, such as hepatoprotective, antioxidative, antiinflammatory, antidiabetic, antiallergic, and antibacterial effects (Li et al., 2009; Bat-Chen et al., 2010; Du et al., 2010; Sertel et al., 2010; Zhang et al., 2010; HamacherBrady et al., 2011; Cheng et al., 2013; Li et al., 2013). Allicin, diallyl thiosulfinate, is the main biologically active compound derived from garlic (Oommen et al., 2004; Arditti et al., 2005; Park et al., 2005; Zhang et al., 2006;