Liu Jing, He Chengwei, Zhou Keyuan, Wang Jingdong, Kang Jing X
Departmement of Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, 149 - 13th Street, Room 4433, Charlestown, MA 02129, USA.
Biochem Biophys Res Commun. 2009 Jan 9;378(2):174-8. doi: 10.1016/j.bbrc.2008.10.169. Epub 2008 Nov 8.
Estrogen receptor (ER) antagonists have been widely used for breast cancer treatment, but the efficacy and drug resistance remain to be clinical concerns. The purpose of this study was to determine whether the extracts of coptis, an anti-inflammatory herb, improve the anticancer efficacy of ER antagonists. The results showed that the combined treatment of ER antagonists and the crude extract of coptis or its purified compound berberine conferred synergistic growth inhibitory effect on MCF-7 cells (ER+), but not on MDA-MB-231 cells (ER-). Similar results were observed in the combined treatment of fulvestrant, a specific aromatase antagonist. Analysis of the expression of breast cancer related genes indicated that EGFR, HER2, bcl-2, and COX-2 were significantly downregulated, while IFN-beta and p21 were remarkably upregulated by berberine. Our results suggest that coptis extracts could be promising adjuvant to ER antagonists in ER positive breast cancer treatment through regulating expression of multiple genes.
雌激素受体(ER)拮抗剂已被广泛用于乳腺癌治疗,但疗效和耐药性仍是临床关注的问题。本研究的目的是确定抗炎草药黄连的提取物是否能提高ER拮抗剂的抗癌疗效。结果表明,ER拮抗剂与黄连粗提物或其纯化化合物黄连素联合治疗对MCF-7细胞(ER+)具有协同生长抑制作用,但对MDA-MB-231细胞(ER-)无此作用。在特异性芳香化酶拮抗剂氟维司群的联合治疗中也观察到了类似结果。对乳腺癌相关基因表达的分析表明,黄连素可显著下调EGFR、HER2、bcl-2和COX-2的表达,同时显著上调IFN-β和p21的表达。我们的结果表明,黄连提取物可能通过调节多个基因的表达,成为ER阳性乳腺癌治疗中ER拮抗剂的有前景的辅助药物。