To see if the cannabinoid drugs we used had induced apoptosis (programmed cell death) in the HL-60 cells, we needed to stain them to observe their structure. When reading previous journals, it appeared that most scientists used the Giemsa stain; however, we wanted to see if two other stains would also produce useful data. Continue reading →

The aim of our project was to determine the effects of cannabinoid drugs on HL-60 cells and whether they had the ability to induce apoptosis. To do this we initially chose 4 different cannabinoid drugs which were incubated with HL-60 cells for 2 hours. The drugs used were: AM630, AM281, Oleamide and 0-2545. These were chosen as they are a mixture of synthetic and endocannabinoids. Continue reading →

HL-60 cells are grown in suspension and therefore must be treated differently to (the more common) adherent cultures. In order to keep the cells alive and growing well, the culture medium must be changed regularly. This allows nutrients and growth factors to be replenished and the cells to be re-seeded to a concentration which minimises overcrowding and cell death. From previous studies we found that the HL-60 cell line grows favourably at around 1×10⁵ cells/ml. Therefore, we typically re-seeded the cells at this density every 2 – 3 days. Continue reading →