Combined Effect of Moringa oleifera and Ionizing Radiation on Survival and Metastatic Activity of Pancreatic Cancer Cells

Abstract

Background: Radiotherapy is one of the main treatments for malignancies. Radioresistance is a major obstacle in this treatment, calling for new treatments to improve radiotherapy outcome. Herbal medicine has low toxicity and could be a source for new radio-enhancing agents. Moringa oleifera (moringa) is a well-known medicinal plant with antiproliferative and antimetastatic properties. Possible mechanisms of moringa anticancer activity may be related to the expression of PARP-1, Bcl-2, COX-2, p65, p-IκB-a, and others. Purpose: The aims of the present study were to investigate effect of moringa alone and combined with radiation on survival and metastatic activity of pancreatic cancer cells and on tumor growth. Methods and Results: The combination of moringa and radiation significantly inhibited PANC-1 cell survival in a dose-dependent manner, as tested by clonogenic and XTT assays. Moreover, standard transwell cell migration/invasion assays demonstrated reduced metastatic activity of these cells. Pyruvate mitigated the inhibitory effect of combined treatment on cell survival. Flow cytometry of moringa-treated cells revealed induction of apoptosis. Western blot analysis found that the combined treatment decreased expression of the pro-apoptotic protein Bcl-2, and downregulated the key component of DNA repair pathways PARP-1 and the NF-κB-related proteins IκB-α, p65-subunit, and COX-2. Moringa significantly inhibited growth of subcutaneous tumors generated by PANC-1 cells in nude mice. Immunohistochemical analysis demonstrated moringa’s antiproliferative and antiangiogenic effects. Conclusions: Moringa decreased pancreatic cancer cell survival and metastatic activity and significantly inhibited tumor growth. The combination of moringa plus radiation resulted in an additional inhibitory effect that provided the rationale for further investigation of this combination as a novel strategy to overcome pancreatic cancer cell radioresistance.

Integrative Network Pharmacology of Moringa oleifera Combined with Gemcitabine against Pancreatic Cancer

“…Although it has been accepted widely, the chemoresistance is one of the major issues associated with this drug. Currently, studies on drug combination have been well recognized in the cancer research community, with the aim to reduce toxicity, minimize the induction of drug resistance, as well as to achieve additional therapeutic effect [5]. Thus, the focus had been drawn towards traditional herbal medicine, which could be an alternative approach to overcome the limitation of gemcitabine against pancreatic cancer.…”

Effect of Feeding of Moringa oleifera Seed Meal as a New Protein Source on Performance, Digestibility and Blood Constituents of Male Goats Under Desert Conditions

“…It contains large amounts of various phytochemicals including phenolics, tannins, saponin, glucosinolates, flavonoids, flavonol glycosides, quercetin, kaempferol, phytate, and lectins (Maizuwo et al, 2017;Atta et al, 2017;. These phytochemicals help in treating various diseases as antidiarrheal, antiulcerative, and hepato-and nephroprotective, antidiabetic and anticancer effects (Gopalakrishnan et al, 2016;Shalaby et al, 2016;Atta et al, 2017Atta et al, , 2018Villarruel-López et al, 2018;Hagoel et al, 2019). All parts of MO tree are edible.…”

Arctigenin Attenuates Breast Cancer Progression through Decreasing GM-CSF/TSLP/STAT3/β-Catenin Signaling

“…Yet the disease has not been conquered and the development of new targeted therapy is still going on. Natural products are major sources providing due to their potentially low toxicity and potential effectiveness, but the functional mechanism of most of them remain unclear [ 41 , 42 ]. The present study showed that arctigenin reduced the expressions of tumor-derived GM-CSF and TSLP through NF-κB p65 to inhibit breast cancer progression.…”