Anticancer mechanism of the effective components of Chinese medicine Fangji

In the new study, researchers from the school of life sciences of Wuhan University confirmed the inhibitory effect of tetrandrine on hepatoma cells in vitro and in vivo, and clarified the molecular mechanism of its anti-tumor, providing theoretical and experimental basis for the development of new hepatoma drugs Relevant papers were published in the authoritative journal of Biochemistry (JBC) Li Wenhua, an associate professor at the school of life sciences, Wuhan University, led the research Its main research fields are the signal transduction pathway and regulatory relationship between proto oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes in tumor occurrence, metastasis and angiogenesis, as well as the molecular mechanism of anticancer drugs targeting specific target sites Cancer is a global public health problem In the past thirty years, the incidence rate of cancer in the world has increased by 3-5% per year Cancer has become the first cause of death In order to snipe the number one killer, scientists around the world are racking their brains to develop treatments Traditional cancer treatment focuses on the tumor itself Radiotherapy and chemotherapy can kill tumor cells and damage normal cells, immune and hematopoietic functions Therefore, it is called "green therapy" to find a new anticancer drug model with good anticancer effect, slight side effects, no harm to normal cells of human body, and increase the benefit rate of patients Tetrandrine is a kind of dibenzylisoquinoline alkaloid extracted from the root of stephaniae tetrandrae, which is widely used in Chinese herbal medicine It has a wide range of pharmacological effects It has a good clinical effect in the treatment of arthritis, hypertension, arrhythmia, pulmonary fibrosis and other diseases Many studies have shown that tetrandrine has a strong antitumor effect, which can inhibit the growth of human breast cancer, esophageal cancer, colon cancer, ovarian cancer and other tumor cells In past studies, researchers have reported that high concentrations of tetrandrine can also induce apoptosis of liver cancer cells In this paper, the researchers confirmed that low-dose tetrandrine (5 μ m) can induce the expression of LC3 - Ⅱ in human hepatocarcinoma (HCC) cells, lead to the formation of acid autophagy lysosomal vacuole (avos), and lead to GFP-LC3 protein like spot like fluorescence pattern, all of which are markers of autophagy Tetrandrine induced intracellular ROS The researchers proved that ROS scavenger treatment can significantly eliminate the autophagy induced by tetrandrine These results indicate that ROS production plays an important role in promoting tetrandrine induced autophagy Mitochondrial dysfunction induced by tetrandrine leads to ROS accumulation and autophagy ROS production activated ERK MAP kinase, and ERK signaling pathway at least partially promoted tetrandrine induced autophagy in liver cancer cells In addition, the researchers also found that tetrandrine regulated the expression of autophagy related gene 7 (Atg7) at the transcription level and promoted the autophagy induced by tetrandrine In addition to in vitro studies, similar results were observed in vivo In vivo, tetrandrine induced ROS accumulation and autophagy Interestingly, tetrandrine treatment also induced autophagy in the muscle cells of filariasis in a ROS dependent manner These results indicate that tetrandrine is a powerful autophagic agonist and may be a promising clinical chemotherapy drug.