Rhein Induces Apoptosis in Human Breast Cancer Cells

Abstract

Human breast cancers cells overexpressing HER2/neu are more aggressive tumors with poor prognosis, and resistance to chemotherapy. This study investigates antiproliferation effects of anthraquinone derivatives of rhubarb root on human breast cancer cells. Of 7 anthraquinone derivatives, only rhein showed antiproliferative and apoptotic effects on both HER2-overexpressing MCF-7 (MCF-7/HER2) and control vector MCF-7 (MCF-7/VEC) cells. Rhein induced dose- and time-dependent manners increase in caspase-9-mediated apoptosis correlating with activation of ROS-mediated activation of NF-κB- and p53-signaling pathways in both cell types. Therefore, this study highlighted rhein as processing anti-proliferative activity against HER2 overexpression or HER2-basal expression in breast cancer cells and playing important roles in apoptotic induction of human breast cancer cells.

Inhibition of glioma progression by a newly discovered CD38 inhibitor

“…To this end, we focused on microglia as microglia/macrophages are the main cells that constitute the glioma microenvironment and are known to express CD38 . As the previous studies showed that in some cells rhein has cytotoxic effect, we first examined the effect of increasing concentrations of rhein on N9 microglia cell viability. The results obtained are shown in Figure a .…”

Trastuzumab-based chemotherapy modulates systemic redox homeostasis in women with HER2-positive breast cancer

“…HER2-containing dimers have long halflives and exhibit strong and persistent signaling due to both slow ligand dissociation and internalization [7]. Thus, HER2 excessively stimulates survival and mitogenic pathways [8,9], resulting in overall deregulated signaling [10], reduced apoptosis [11], prolonged cell survival [12], and increased metastatic potential [13].…”

A platform for fast screening potential anti‐breast cancer compounds in traditional Chinese medicines

“…It can apparently demonstrates the efficacy, side effects and toxicity of medicines as a whole; however, it is high cost, lowthroughput and cannot be used for the direct screening of bioactive components in TCMs (Huang et al, 2004). Cell-, receptor-and enzyme-based screenings have gradually become fundamental for modern high-throughput screening of bioactive compounds in medicinal plants (Chang et al, 2011;de Beer et al, 2011). Recently, bioactivity-based LC-MS/ MS identification technology has attracted more and more attention owing to its high throughput, high specificity and low cost (Hou et al, 2012;Su et al, 2010).…”