Artemisinin (Qinghaosu) is an ancient Chinese herbal therapy for malarial fevers which has been recently found to have potent activity against many forms of malarial organisms, including chloroquine-resistant Plasmodium falciparum.

Artemisinin (50, 100 or 200 mg/kg /day, p.o.) prevents isoflurane-induced working memory impairments as observed in T-maze test. Artemisinin enhances spatial navigation and memory of rats exposed to isoflurane. Artemisinin-treated rats exhibit markedly better performance in comparison with isoflurane-alone-exposed rats[4].

Briefly, PC12 cells are lysed in lysis buffer and centrifuged at 12,500×g for 5 min 15 mL of cell lysate is incubated with 50 mL of 2X substrate working solution at room temperature for 30 min in 96-well plates. The fluorescence intensity is then determined by Infinite M200 PRO Multimode Microplate at an excitation wavelength of 490 nm and emission at 520 nm. The fluorescence intensity of each sample is normalized to the protein concentration of sample. All values of % caspase 3/7 activities are normalized to the control group.

Artemisinin is diluted in 0.01% DMSO. For this purpose, cells are cultivated in 96-well plates in DMEM, supplemented with insulin. The artemisinin, Dox, and DDP are added to media at different concentrations and the cells are cultivated for either 24 or 48 h. For this purpose artemisinin is diluted in 0.01% DMSO in media. After this time, 10 μL of the MTT dye solution (5 mg/mL in phosphate buffer saline) is added to the cells; the cells are incubated at the same conditions for 3 h. After centrifugation (1500 rpm, 5 min) the supernatant is removed. 100 μL of dimethyl sulfoxide is added to each well, to dissolve formazan. The absorption is measured, using a multi-well spectrophotometer at a wavelength of 540 nm.