Investigating Anti-Breast Cancer Properties of the Antibiotic Vancomycin-A Drug Repurposing study using Molecular Docking Techniques.

The incidence of triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is approximately 10-15% of all breast cancer cases around the world. It is important to search for novel therapeutic agents against TNBC since this form of cancer is a leading cause of death in women worldwide. Various genetic mutations in TNBC patients have been identified. EZH2 is an oncoprotein involved in breast, prostate, colon, and other cancers. In silico drug design and bioinformatics studies helped to identify the FDA approved antibiotic, vancomycin as a potential inhibitor of the EZH2 oncoprotein. A drug repurposing study of vancomycin to investigate the potential anti TNBC properties was tested by doing cytotoxicity analysis with vancomycin in TNBC cell lines by WST-8 assay, spheroid forming assay and ROS generation experiments. The EZH2 inhibitor property of vancomycin was studied by RT-PCR and ELISA assay. Our initial results showed that Vancomycin effectively prevents cell proliferation, spheroid formation and generates ROS in the TNBC cell lines tested as well as inhibit the EZH2 gene expression.