One of the attractive strategies considered in current cancer prevention or theraphy is to induce death of malignant cells throught of apoptosis. Numerous studies in animal models and more recent studies in human have demonstrated cancer preventive effects with selenium. The aim of this study was to investigated effects of sodium selenite to induced apoptosis as well as to inhibit growth, proliferation in human hepatoblastoma (HepG2) cells compared in normal liver cell line (WRL[1]68). The results of this study showed that sodium selenite reduced significantly viabilities of WRL[1]68 and HepG2 cells with IC50 46.67 and 51.97 μM respectively. Analysis of the DNA fragmentation with BrdU assay, showed that selenite also induced apoptotic in liver cancer cell line compared with control. The induced significantly apoptotic values by 3.03 ± 0.77 %, 4.67 ± 0.79 % and 34.07 ± 4.66 % in HepG2 cell line at 25, 50 and 100 μM respectively. However selenite had apoptotic values by 10.77 ± 0.007 %, 14.3 ± 0.019 % and 20.37 ± 0.007 % in normal cell (WRL-68) at 25, 50 and 100 μM respectively. This study showed that selenite had inhibitory effects on the viability and DNA synthesis of human hepatoblastoma cells (HepG2).
