Reversal of Drug Resistance Through the Use of Hesperidin and Doxorubicin in a DLD-1 Colorectal Cell Line

Chemotherapeutic drugs are a conventional cancer treatment type that are efficient in killing anti-apoptotic cells. However, cancer cells are prone to becoming resistant to chemotherapeutic drugs due to changes in gene expression induced by extended use of chemotherapy drugs. The purpose of this study was to determine if drug-resistance in DLD-1 colorectal cancer cells induced by the chemotherapeutic drug, doxorubicin, could be reversed with the intervention of an added concentration of the organic compound, hesperidin. It was hypothesized that as the added hesperidin concentration to the drug-resistant DLD-1 cells is increased, the cell viability would decrease as a result of hesperidin's anti-cancer properties. One 96 well plate contained drug-resistant DLD-1 cells and a second plate contained drug sensitive DLD-1 cells, both containing 12 baseline control wells. Below the baseline controls, the plates were further split into thirds of 28 wells, each containing a different hesperidin concentration: 0.1 μM, 10 μM, and 100 μM, along with 100 nM of doxorubicin. The t-test results suggested statistical significance in the 0.1 μM groups, (t(56) = 10.10, p =