In vitro activity: Purvalanol A decreases cell viability in dose-dependent manner in MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231 cell lines. Purvalanol A induces cell viability loss by 50 % in MCF-7 cells but MDA-MB-231 cells sre less sensitive to Purvalanol A (32 % decreases in cell viability). Purvalanol A induces mitochondria-mediated apoptosis in MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231 cells. Purvalanol A effectively prevents c-Src-mediated transformation by inhibiting both cell cycle progression and c-Src signaling, and effectively suppresses the anchorage independent growth of some human cancer cells in which c-Src is up-regulated. Purvalanol A has a stronger inhibitory effect on the anchorage-independent growth of HT29 and SW480 human colon cancer cells.

Kinase Assay: Purvalanol A is a potent CDK inhibitor, inhibiting cdc2-cyclin B, cdk2-cyclin A, cdk2-cyclin E, cdk4-cyclin D1, and cdk5-p35 with IC50s of 4, 70, 35, 850, 75 nM, resepctively.

Cell Assay: Cells are seeded at 10000 density in 96-well plates and treated with various concentrations of Purvalanol A (0-100 μM) for 24 h. Cells are exposed to 10 μL of 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltet- razolium bromide dye (5 mg/mL) and are incubated at 37℃ for 4 h. In order to solubilize the formazan crystals 100 μL DMSO is added. Absorbance is determined at 570 nm spectrophotometrically.

Science. 1998 Jul 24;281(5376):533-8; Mol Biol Rep. 2014 Jan;41(1):145-54; Genes Cells. 2010 Oct;15(10):1051-62.