Medical Ultrasound Center, Northwest Women's and Children's Hospital, Xi'an, Shaanxi, 710061, China.
First Department of Gynecology, Northwest Women's and Children's Hospital, Xi'an, Shaanxi, 710061, China.
Biochem Biophys Res Commun. 2020 Jun 4;526(3):820-826. doi: 10.1016/j.bbrc.2020.03.136. Epub 2020 Apr 6.
Ovarian carcinoma is the key cause of cancer death from gynecological malignancy of women. Chemotherapy-resistance, metastasis and relapse contribute to the high mortality in ovarian cancer patients. Cancer stem cells (CSCs) stand for the root of kinds of cancer types such as ovarian cancer, are the key driver of tumor initiation, cancer metastasis, and resistance to conventional chemotherapy as well as genomic targeted therapy. Thus, the approach to eliminate CSCs and uncovering the mechanism will have substantial impact on cancer therapy. However, targeting CSC remains unfeasible in clinical practice in ovarian cancer therapy. In this study, we first found that Low-intensity ultrasound (LIUS) was capable of reducing the CSC populations in the xenograft model with ovarian cancer, with blocking survival, anti-apoptosis, self-renewal, and downregulating the cancer stemness genes in ovarian CSCs. Moreover, LIUS ameliorated IL-6/STAT3 inflammatory pathway via inhibiting IL-6-induced STAT3 phosphorylation, DNA binding activity and, the expressions of its downstream effectors in ovarian CSCs while no explicit effect was found in the corresponding bulk cancer cells. Additional approaches in molecular studies showed that LIUS disrupts CSC features via inhibiting IL-6/STAT3 inflammatory pathway. Collectively, our data for the first time elucidate IL-6/STAT3 inflammatory loop as the key CSC or cancer stemness pathway in ovarian cancer by LIUS treatment, providing a novel and potential therapy and a promising target in ovarian cancer.
卵巢癌是导致妇科恶性肿瘤女性癌症死亡的主要原因。化疗耐药、转移和复发是导致卵巢癌患者死亡率高的原因。癌症干细胞(CSC)代表了多种癌症类型的根源,如卵巢癌,是肿瘤起始、癌症转移以及对常规化疗和基因组靶向治疗耐药的关键驱动因素。因此,消除 CSC 并揭示其机制将对癌症治疗产生重大影响。然而,在卵巢癌治疗的临床实践中,靶向 CSC 仍然不可行。在这项研究中,我们首先发现低强度超声(LIUS)能够减少卵巢癌异种移植模型中的 CSC 群体,阻断生存、抗凋亡、自我更新,并下调卵巢 CSCs 中的癌症干性基因。此外,LIUS 通过抑制 IL-6 诱导的 STAT3 磷酸化、DNA 结合活性和其下游效应物在卵巢 CSCs 中的表达,改善了 IL-6/STAT3 炎症通路,而在相应的大量癌细胞中没有发现明显的作用。进一步的分子研究表明,LIUS 通过抑制 IL-6/STAT3 炎症通路破坏 CSC 特征。总之,我们的数据首次阐明了 IL-6/STAT3 炎症环是卵巢癌中关键的 CSC 或癌症干性通路,为卵巢癌提供了一种新的潜在治疗方法和有前途的治疗靶点。