2. Academic Validation
  3. Echinatin suppresses esophageal cancer tumor growth and invasion through inducing AKT/mTOR-dependent autophagy and apoptosis

Echinatin suppresses esophageal cancer tumor growth and invasion through inducing AKT/mTOR-dependent autophagy and apoptosis

  • Cell Death Dis. 2020 Jul 13;11(7):524. doi: 10.1038/s41419-020-2730-7.
Pan Hong # 1,  Qin-Wen Liu # 2,  Yao Xie 2,  Qi-Hua Zhang 1,  Long Liao 1,  Qing-Yu He 3,  Bin Li 4,  Wen Wen Xu 5
Affiliations

Affiliations

  • 1 MOE Key Laboratory of Tumor Molecular Biology and Key Laboratory of Functional Protein Research of Guangdong Higher Education Institutes, Institute of Life and Health Engineering, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China.
  • 2 MOE Key Laboratory of Tumor Molecular Biology and Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Bioengineering Medicine, National Engineering Research Center of Genetic Medicine, Institute of Biomedicine, College of Life Science and Technology, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China.
  • 3 MOE Key Laboratory of Tumor Molecular Biology and Key Laboratory of Functional Protein Research of Guangdong Higher Education Institutes, Institute of Life and Health Engineering, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China. tqyhe@jnu.edu.cn.
  • 4 MOE Key Laboratory of Tumor Molecular Biology and Key Laboratory of Functional Protein Research of Guangdong Higher Education Institutes, Institute of Life and Health Engineering, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China. libin2015@jnu.edu.cn.
  • 5 MOE Key Laboratory of Tumor Molecular Biology and Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Bioengineering Medicine, National Engineering Research Center of Genetic Medicine, Institute of Biomedicine, College of Life Science and Technology, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China. xuwenwen@jnu.edu.cn.
  • # Contributed equally.
PMID: 32655130 DOI: 10.1038/s41419-020-2730-7
Abstract

Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is one of the most common malignant tumors with poor survival. It is urgent to search for new efficient drugs with good stability and safety for clinical therapy. This study aims to identify potential Anticancer drugs from a compound library consisting of 429 Natural Products. Echinatin, a compound isolated from the Chinese herb Glycyrrhiza uralensis Fisch, was found to markedly induce Apoptosis and inhibit proliferation and colony-formation ability in ESCC. Confocal fluorescence microscopy data showed that echinatin significantly induced Autophagy in ESCC cells, and Autophagy Inhibitor bafilomycinA1 attenuated the suppressive effects of echinatin on cell viability and Apoptosis. Mechanistically, RNA Sequencing coupled with bioinformatics analysis and a series of functional assays revealed that echinatin induced Apoptosis and Autophagy through inactivation of Akt/mTOR signaling pathway, whereas constitutive activation of Akt significantly abrogated these effects. Furthermore, we demonstrated that echinatin had a significant antitumor effect in the tumor xenograft model and markedly suppressed cell migration and invasion abilities of ESCC cells in a dose-dependent manner. Our findings provide the first evidence that echinatin could be a novel therapeutic strategy for treating ESCC.

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