Osteosarcoma is the most common type of malignancy of bone and
generally occurs among adolescent and young adults. Like the osteoblast cells of
normal bone, osteosarcoma also forms the bone matrix, but the osteoid is not as strong
as that of normal bones. Osteosarcoma is characterized by the production of weak or
immature bones by the malignant cells. As the diagnosis of osteosarcoma is extremely
poor, it suggests a critical need to develop some promising anti-osteosarcoma drugs to
improve disease outcome. Many anti-cancer compounds induce apoptotic cell suicide
via some potent cellular, molecular and biochemical markers. The cancer cell lines
provide a valuable model system to study an extensive variety of cancer characteristics
in the cell biology, genetics and chemotherapy or the impact of therapeutic molecules.
The methods presented in this chapter describe the experimental technique used to
culture the osteosarcoma cells for the documentation of DNA fragmentation and
Caspase-3 activation associated with apoptosis.
Keywords: Adolescence, Apoptosis, Cancer cell line, Caspase-3, Chemotherapy,
DNA fragmentation, Malignancy, Molecular and biochemical markers,
Osteosarcoma, Therapeutic molecules.
