Morphological changes in human gall bladder carcinoma cell line-NOZ due to epirubicin and doxorubicin.

Epirubicin is widely used in various cancer therapies because its side effects and less than those of doxorubicin. We compared the direct effects of doxorubicin and epirubicin to cellsin vitro. In this study, we used the human gall bladder carcinoma cell line-NOZ. We evaluated the cytocidal effects using a DNA fluorimetric assay with fluorochrome Hoechst 33342. The addition of epirubicin in a culture medium showed stronger cytocidal effects than the addition of doxorubicin. Morphologically, after treatments with the two drugs, cells were enlarged, large vacuoles appeared in the cytoplasm, and concentrated microvillus-like structures due to doxorubicin were observed by transmission electron microscopy.