Baicalin Induces Apoptosis and Suppresses the Cell Cycle Progression of Lung Cancer Cells Through Downregulating Akt/mTOR Signaling Pathway.

Xinbing Sui,Bi Chen,Xiaying Chen,Peng Chen,Ting Duan,Tian Xie,Chengyong Wen,Xia Ding,Ting Pan,Jiao Feng,Mingming Zhang,Na Kong,Weirui Ma,Yu Xiang,Lili Yan,Ruonan Zhang,Qibiao Wu,Quan Gao,Zaixing Yang ,Xiao‐Jian Han ,Tengchuan Jin ,Wen‐Cheng Liu

doi:10.3389/fmolb.2020.602282

Abstract

Baicalin, as a natural active ingredient extracted and isolated from the traditional Chinese medicine Scutellaria baicalensis Georgi., has been potentially used in various areas for its antioxidative, antitumor, anti-inflammatory, and anti-proliferative activities. Although several studies have reported the antitumor effects of baicalin against various cancer types, its beneficial effects on lung cancer have not yet been elucidated. Therefore, the therapeutic effects and molecular mechanisms of baicalin on lung cancer cell lines H1299 and H1650 were investigated. Here, the results of its antitumor activity were shown. We found that Akt/mTOR pathway inhibition was the essential determinant in baicalin-induced cell cycle arrest. Furthermore, when the Akt Agonist SC79 or Akt plasmid transfection was performed, the antitumor effect of baicalin was significantly abrogated in both H1299 and H1650 cells. In conclusion, we found that baicalin exerted its antitumor activity mainly by inducing Akt-dependent cell cycle arrest and promoting apoptosis, which show great potential for developing a new drug for lung cancer treatment.

Highlights

Lung cancer is still one of the most fatal cancers in the world (Bray et al, 2018)
The antitumor activity of baicalin was investigated on the two different lung cancer cells H1299 and H1650, and the results show that baicalin could induce apoptosis as well as cell cycle arrest of lung cancer cells, indicating that baicalin has multiple antitumor mechanisms
After the treatment with various concentrations of baicalin at three time points, the results indicated that cell viability of lung cancer cells was inhibited by baicalin and the efficacy was positively correlated with drug dose and treatment time (Figure 1A)

Summary

Introduction

Chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and molecular target therapy are major treatment options for lung cancer patients (Fiero et al, 2019). Despite recent advances in new antitumor agents and intensitymodulated radiation therapy, the side effects and toxicity of these strategies have produced a bottleneck in clinical lung cancer treatments (Hellmann et al, 2019; Crunkhorn, 2020). There is an urgent need to discover alternative reagents or novel therapeutic approaches for lung cancer patients. A Prospective Compound for Lung Cancer Treatment. Few studies have revealed the antitumor action of baicalin in lung cancer cells (Wei et al, 2017; Diao et al, 2019); the therapeutic effects and underlying mechanism of baicalin in lung cancer have not been elucidated yet

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Discussion

Conclusion