Cellular senescence contributes to tumor regression through both cell autonomous and non-autonomous mechanisms. Drugs inducing cancer cell senescence and modulating senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP) render advantage to the cancer treatment. Breast cancer remains the second most cause of female cancer mortality, among which triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) has a more aggressive clinical course. Our study showed that in TNBC cell lines including MDA-MB-231 and 4T1 cells, moderate concentrations of wogonin (5, 7-dihydroxy-8-methoxy-2-phenyl-4h-1-benzopyran-4-one) (50-100 μM) not only induced permanent proliferation inhibition, but also increased P16 expression, β-galactosidase activity, senescence-associated heterochromatin foci and SASP, which are the typical characteristics of cellular senescence. Moreover, results showed that wogonin-induced senescence was partially attributed to the reactive oxygen species (ROS) accumulation upon wogonin treatment in MDA-MB-231 cells, since elimination of ROS by N-acetylcysteine (NAC) was able to repress wogonin-induced β-galactosidase activity. Mechanistically, wogonin reduced the expression of TXNRD2, an important antioxidant enzyme in controlling the levels of cellular ROS, by altering the histone acetylation at its regulatory region. In addition, senescent MDA-MB-231 cells induced by wogonin exhibited activated NF-κB and suppressed STAT3, which were recognized as regulators of SASP. SASP from these senescent cells suppressed tumor cell growth, promoted macrophage M1 polarization in vitro and increased immune cell infiltration in xenografted tumors in vivo. These results reveal another mechanism for the anti-breast cancer activity of wogonin by inducing cellular senescence, which suppresses tumor progression both autonomously and non-autonomously.
Decreasing bone marrow (BM) microvessel density and circulating angiogenic cytokine levels are promising strategies for the treatment of relapsed and resistant acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Previous studies have reported that wogonoside could inhibit the progression of AML and suppress angiogenesis in a solid tumor, but the correlation of these two effects was ignored. In this research, we determined whether wogonoside could inhibit angiogenesis in this hematologic malignancy. We found that wogonoside could inhibit tumor growth and progression, and prolong the survival of nude mice inoculated with U937/MDR. Besides, reducing BM angiogenesis might cause therapeutic effect against resistant AML. Therefore, coculture between AML cells and BM stromal cells was established to imitate their crosstalk. Then, the effect of wogonoside on BM angiogenesis was tested in vitro and in vivo. We found that wogonoside could suppress microvessel formation in the chicken chorioallantoic membrane assay model and matrigel plug assay. The mechanism research revealed that wogonoside could block the JAK2-STAT3 pathway in AML cells and stromal cells to break their positive feedback. We detected several cytokines related to AML or angiogenesis and found that secreted interleukin-8 was a significant angiogenic cytokine to induce BM angiogenesis. These findings supported that new diagnostics and promising treatment strategies could be developed in relapsed and resistant AML patients.
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