Growth inhibitory efficacy of Cornus�officinalis in a cell culture model for triple‑negative breast cancer

Abstract

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) lacks the expressions of estrogen receptor-α, progesterone receptor and human epidermal growth factor receptor-2. The treatment options for TNBC include anthracyclin/taxol based conventional chemotherapy and small molecular inhibitor based targeted therapy. However, the therapeutic efficacy is limited by systemic toxicity and acquired tumor resistance; identification of less toxic testable alternatives is urgently required. Non-toxic nutritional herbs are commonly used in traditional Chinese herbal medicine for general health management and may additionally represent a testable therapeutic alternative for TNBC. The present study examined the growth inhibitory efficacy of the nutritional herb Cornus officinalis (CO) in MDA-MB-231 cells, which represent a cell culture model for TNBC, and identified potential mechanistic leads. In MDA-MB-231 cells, CO induced dose-dependent cytostatic growth arrest [inhibitory concentration (IC) 50 , 0.1% and IC 90 , 0.5%], and inhibited anchorage independent colony formation. Mechanistically, CO inhibited G 1 to S phase transition leading to G 1 arrest and decreased the expression of cyclin D1 and phosphorylated-retinoblastoma proteins. CO additionally altered apoptosis specific BCL-2 associated X protein/B-cell lymphoma-2 expression and upregulated pro-apoptotic caspase-3/7 activity. Collectively, these data provided mechanistic evidence for the efficacy of CO, and validated a mechanism-based approach to prioritize efficacious nutritional herbs as testable alternatives for secondary prevention/treatment of TNBC.

Long non-coding RNA LRRC75A-AS1 facilitates triple negative breast cancer cell proliferation and invasion via functioning as a ceRNA to modulate BAALC

“…Besides, Chinese herbal compound has been reported to function in BC 6 . Cornus officinalis could inhibit TNBC cell growth 7 . Tanshinone compound extracted from salvia miltiorrhiza was used to treat BC 8 .…”

Exploring Herbal Medicine Use during Palliative Cancer Care: The Integrative Physician as a Facilitator of Pharmacist–Patient–Oncologist Communication

“…In an in vitro study, an XTT assay was used to test the cytotoxic activity of Alanda on two breast cancer cell lines (MDA-MB231 and SKBR3). While no anticancer activity of the herbal preparation (as measured by IC 50 ) was detected, it was shown that the addition of Alanda to cancer cells in the presence of the chemotherapy agents carboplatin and cisplatin resulted in a dose-dependent reduction in their cytotoxic ability, by factors of 2 and 4 in the MDA-MB231 and SKBR3 breast cancer cell lines, respectively [ 27 ].Other herbs such as such as Japanese cornel ( Cornus officinalis ) and Indian sarsaparilla ( Hemidesmus indicus ) have been shown to have significant cytostatic effects on cancer cell lines [ 39 , 40 ], though their impact on conventional cytostatic agents remains unclear.…”

Molecules and Functions of Cornus officinalis Bark Volatiles

“…Studies have shown that in the decontamination study of Bawei Pills, only cornus officinalis has hypoglycemic effect on streptozotocininduced rat model of diabetes (Ma et al, 2014;Qian et al, 2001;Chen et al, 2016) cornus officinalis can kill ascites cancer cells in vitro. Clinically used for radiotherapy, chemotherapy, leukopenia, primary liver cancer, metastatic liver cancer (Telang et al, 2016;Telang et al, 2012), etc. ; In addition, ethanol extract cornus officinalis can significantly reduce normal blood glucose, serum total cholesterol and triacylglycerol; and cornus officinalis Oleanolic acid has a slight cardiac diuretic effect and is also clinically used to treat acute viral hepatitis (Hsu et al, 2006;Wang et al, 2007;Jang et al, 2014).…”