Cervical cancer is one of the most common cancers among women worldwide. Current standards of care for cervical cancer includes surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. Conventional chemotherapy fails to elicit therapeutic responses and causes severe systemic toxicity. Thus, developing a natural product based, safe treatment modality would be a highly viable option. Curcumin (CUR) is a well-known natural compound, which exhibits excellent anti-cancer potential by regulating many proliferative, oncogenic, and chemo-resistance associated genes/proteins. However, due to rapid degradation and poor bioavailability, its translational and clinical use has been limited. To improve these clinically relevant parameters, we report a poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) based curcumin nanoparticle formulation (Nano-CUR). This study demonstrates that in comparison to free CUR, Nano-CUR effectively inhibits cell growth, induces apoptosis, and arrests the cell cycle in cervical cancer cell lines. Nano-CUR treatment modulated entities such as miRNAs, transcription factors, and proteins associated with carcinogenesis. Moreover, Nano-CUR effectively reduced the tumor burden in a pre-clinical orthotopic mouse model of cervical cancer by decreasing oncogenic miRNA-21, suppressing nuclear β-catenin, and abrogating expression of E6/E7 HPV oncoproteins including smoking compound benzo[a]pyrene (BaP) induced E6/E7 and IL-6 expression. These superior pre-clinical data suggest that Nano-CUR may be an effective therapeutic modality for cervical cancer.

Axon guidance molecules, slit glycoprotein (Slit) and Roundabout receptor (Robo), have implications in the regulation of physiological processes. Recent studies indicate that Slit and Robo also have important roles in tumorigenesis, cancer progression and metastasis. The Slit/Robo pathway can be considered a master regulator for multiple oncogenic signaling pathways. Herein, we provide a comprehensive review on the role of these molecules and their associated signaling pathways in cancer progression and metastasis. Overall, the current available data suggest that the Slit/Robo pathway could be a promising target for development of anticancer drugs.

The management of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is extremely poor due to lack of an efficient therapy and development of chemoresistance to the current standard therapy, gemcitabine (GEM). Recent studies implicate the intimate reciprocal interactions between epithelia and underlying stroma due to paracrine Sonic hedgehog (SHH) signaling in producing desmoplasia and chemoresistance in PDAC. Herein, we report for the first time that a nonsteroidal drug, ormeloxifene (ORM), has potent anti-cancer properties and depletes tumor-associated stromal tissue by inhibiting the SHH signaling pathway in PDAC. We found that ORM inhibited cell proliferation and induced death in PDAC cells, which provoked us to investigate the combinatorial effects of ORM with GEM at the molecular level. ORM caused potent inhibition of the SHH signaling pathway via downregulation of SHH and its related important downstream targets such as Gli-1, SMO, PTCH1/2, NFκB, p-AKT and Cyclin D1. ORM potentiated the anti-tumorigenic effect of GEM by 75% in PDAC xenograft mice. Further, ORM depleted tumor-associated stroma in xenograft tumor tissues by inhibiting the SHH cellular signaling pathway and mouse/human collagen I expression. Xenograft tumors treated with ORM in combination with GEM restored the tumor suppressor miR-132, and inhibited stromal cell infiltration into the tumor tissues. Additionally, invasiveness of tumor cells co-cultivated with TGFβ-stimulated human pancreatic stromal cells was effectively inhibited by ORM treatment alone or in combination with GEM. We propose that ORM has high therapeutic index and in a combination therapy with GEM it possesses great promise as a treatment of choice for PDAC/pancreatic cancer.