• Yangyang He, Muhammad Khan, Jingbo Yang, Min Yao, Shili Yu, and Hongwen Gao.
• Department of Pathology, the Second Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun 130041, P.R. China.
• Int J Med Sci. 2018 Jan 1; 15 (8): 832839832-839.

AbstractCardiac glycosides are natural compounds used for the treatment of congestive heart failure and cardiac arrhythmias. Recently, they have been reported to exhibit anticancer activity. Proscillaridin A (PSN-A), a cardiac glycoside constituent of Urginea maritima has been shown to exhibit anticancer activity. However, the cellular targets and anticancer mechanism of PSN-A in various cancers including prostate cancer remain largely unexplored. In the present study, we have shown that PSN-A inhibits proliferation and induces apoptosis in prostate cancer cells in a dose-dependent manner. Further mechanistic study have shown that anticancer activity of PSN-A in prostate cancer cells is associated with ROS generation, Bcl-2 family proteins modulation, mitochondrial membrane potential disruption and ultimately activation of caspase-3 and cleavage of PARP. Moreover, we found that PSN-A inhibits JAK2/STAT3 signaling and augments doxorubicin toxicity in prostate cancer cells. Of note, LNCaP cells were found to be more sensitive to PSN-A treatment as compared to DU145 cells. Taken together, the data provided first evidence of the anticancer activity and possible molecular mechanism of PSN-A in prostate cancer. Further study is needed to develop PSN-A into a potential lead compound for the treatment of prostate cancer.

26 keywords...

hide…