Abstract
In recent years Epithelial Mesenchymal Transition (EMT) has been proposed as a mechanism indispensable to acquisition of metastatic properties by tumor cells. In this study we tested the ability of Ferrerol, a Chinese herb-derived compound to ablate the EMT in human lung squamous cell carcinoma cells. Human lung squamous cell carcinoma cells, Calu-1 were treated with various concentrations of Ferrerol for 24 h to examine its effect on their viability by the MTT assay. Only those concentrations which showed least effect on the viability of Calu-1 cells were further used to evaluate the expression of epithelial and mesenchymal markers by western blotting. Furthermore the effect of such concentrations on the migration and invasion of Calu-1 cells was determined by wound healing and transwell invasion assays respectively. The results demonstrated that Ferrerol treatment led to the downregulation of Slug and Zeb-1, transcriptional regulators of EMT with the concomitant increase and decrease in the expression of E-cadherin and vimentin respectively. These data were further supported by migration and invasion assays which demonstrated that Ferrerol treatment caused inhibited the migration and invasion of Calu-1 lung squamous cell carcinoma cells. Taken together, our results indicate that Ferrerol suppresses lung squamous cell carcinoma cell metastatic potential by modulating the expression of EMT proteins.
Published Version
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