The triterpenoids of Hibiscus syriacus induce apoptosis and inhibit cell migration in breast cancer cells

BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Research Article

Ying-Hsin Chen¹  Jyh-Cherng Yu²  Fung-Wei Chang³  Chia-Lynn Fu⁴  Ren-Jun Hsu⁵  Jar-Yi Ho⁶  Cheng-Ping Yu⁶  Yao-Chin Hsu⁷  Shu-Pin Chen⁸  Jui-Ming Liu⁹ 

[1] Department of Emergency Medicine, Tri-Service General Hospital, National Defense Medical Center, Taipei, Taiwan;Department of General Surgery, Tri-Service General Hospital, National Defense Medical Center, Taipei, Taiwan;Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology, Tri-Service General Hospital, National Defense Medical Center, Taipei, Taiwan;Department of Pathology, and Graduate Institute of Pathology and Parasitology, Tri-Service General Hospital, National Defense Medical Center, Taipei, Taiwan;Department of Pathology, and Graduate Institute of Pathology and Parasitology, Tri-Service General Hospital, National Defense Medical Center, Taipei, Taiwan;Biobank Management Center of Tri-Service General Hospital, National Defense Medical Center, Taipei, Taiwan;Department of Pathology, and Graduate Institute of Pathology and Parasitology, Tri-Service General Hospital, National Defense Medical Center, Taipei, Taiwan;Graduate Institute of Life Sciences, National Defense Medical Center, Taipei, Taiwan;Departments of Chinese Medicine, Chi-Mai Medical Center, Tainan, Taiwan;Division of Medical Genetics, Department of Pediatrics, Chang Gung Children’s Hospital, Taoyuan, Taiwan;Division of Urology, Department of Surgery, Taoyuan General Hospital, Ministry of Health and Welfare, Taoyuan, Taiwan;

关键词: Hibiscus syriacus;    Betulin;    Breast cancer;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12906-015-0592-9

 received in 2014-10-01, accepted in 2015-02-26,  发布年份 2015

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundBreast cancer-related mortality increases annually. The efficacy of current breast cancer treatments is limited, and they have numerous side effects and permit high recurrence. Patients with estrogen receptor (ER)-negative or triple-negative breast cancer are particularly difficult to treat. Treatment for this type of cancer is lacking, and its prognosis is poor, necessitating the search for alternative treatments.MethodsThis study screened Chinese herb Hibiscus syriacus extracts and identified a novel anti-cancer drug for patients with ER-negative breast cancer. The inhibitory effects on cell viability and migration were evaluated for each compound, and the molecular regulatory effects were evaluated on both mRNA and protein levels.ResultWe found several triterpenoids including betulin (K02) and its derivatives (K03, K04, and K06) from H. syriacus inhibited human triple-negative breast cancer cell viability and migration but revealed smaller cytotoxic effects on normal mammalian epithelial cells. Betulin and its derivatives induced apoptosis by activating apoptosis-related genes. In addition, they activated p21 expression, which induced cell cycle arrest in breast cancer cells. Betulin (K02) and betulinic acid (K06) had stronger inhibitory effects on cell viability and migration than K03 and K04.ConclusionsH. syriacus extracts might inhibit breast cancer cell viability and induce apoptosis by activating p53 family regulated pathways and inhibiting AKT activation. H. syriacus extracts may provide important insight into the development of novel alternative therapies for breast cancer.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Hsu et al.; licensee BioMed Central. 2015. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.