Inhibition of proliferation of a hepatoma cell line by fucoxanthin in relation to cell cycle arrest and enhanced gap junctional intercellular communication

Could Fucoxanthin Interaction with Lipid Rafts Mediate its Cytotoxicity in Cancer Cells?

“…Structure and biological activity of fucoxanthin and carotenoids in cancer cells [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] Biological functions of carotenoids in cell membranes [19][20][21][22] Interaction of carotenoids with lipid rafts [23] Cell model to study the integration of xenobiotics into lipid rafts [24] Antioxidant and pro-oxidant activity of fucoxanthin in animal cells and tissues [25][26][27] Structure and function of lipid rafts in cell membranes [28,29] Targeting lipid rafts in cancer cells [30][31][32][33][34][35][36] Ion channels, lipid rafts and cancer cells [37,38] Lipid rafts, cytoskeleton, cancer cells invasivity and tumor angiogenesis [30,40] …”

“…Particularly, fucoxanthin ( Figure 1), a marine carotenoid purified from brown micro-and macroalgae, attracts extensive interest owing to its antiproliferative, pro-apoptotic and pro-autophagic activities, demonstrated in a large panel of cancer cells [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. Its antitumoral activity was validated in animal models, in which it limits tumor growth, angiogenesis and invasivity, suggesting a possible use for clinical oncology [1,15].…”

“…Fucoxanthin was also reported to inhibit mammalian topoisomerases [2,3], disturb the MAPK and NF-kB pathways [17], enhance Gap junctional intercellular communication by up-regulating the expression of connexins [12], and reverse multi-drug resistance by interfering with drugs efflux systems [3,13]. It also inhibits matrix metalloproteases involved in tumor tissular invasivity [8,18], and induces autophagy in some cancer cell models [19].…”

“…Ions channels and connexins also play a pivotal role to control the molecular dialogue between cancer cells and the tumor microenvironment. Fucoxanthin was reported to stimulate the expression of connexins 32 and 43 in cancer cells, enhance Gap junction intracellular communication and increase the concentration of intracellular Ca 2+ [12]. Stimulation of the gap junctional communication facilitates the distribution of anticancer drugs within neighbouring tumor cells, and may explain in part why fucoxanthin is able to sensitize tumor cells to some anticancer drugs.…”

Anti-Cancer Mechanism and Possibility of Nano-Suspension Formulation for a Marine Algae Product Fucoxanthin

“…It was demonstrated that FX generated ROS and that the accumulation of ROS performed a crucial role in the fucoxanthin-induced Bcl-xL signaling pathway (Kim et al, 2010). Liu et al (2009) hypothesized that fucoxanthin may cause cell cycle arrest and enhance gap junctional intercellular communication (GJIC) in SK-Hep-1 human hepatoma cells. Results revealed that FX strongly inhibited the proliferation of SK-Hep-1 cells at 24h of incubation.…”