Abstract

One of the main problems in oncology is the development of drugs that cause the death of cancer cells without damaging normal cells. Another key problem to be solved is to suppress the drug resistance of cancer cells. The third important issue is to provide effective penetration of drug molecules to cancer cells. TRAIL (TNFα-related apoptosis inducing ligand)/Apo2L is a highly selective anticancer agent. However, the recombinant TRAIL protein having high efficiency against cancer cells in vitro was not effective in clinical trials. Recently we have discovered an acquisition of TRAIL resistance by cancer cells in confluent cultures, which is apparently a manifestation of the general phenomenon of multicellular resistance. The aim of this study was to evaluate whether the anticancer effect of the recombinant protein TRAIL in vivo can be improved by the suppression of multicellular TRAIL-resistance using sorafenib and a tumor-penetrating peptide iRGD, c(CRGDKGPDC). The results testified a great increase in the resistance of human fibrosarcoma HT-1080 cells to izTRAIL both in confluent cultures and in spheroids. Sorafenib administered at nontoxic concentration effectively suppressed confluent- or spheroid-mediated TRAIL-resistance of HT-1080 cells in vitro. Sorafenib combined with iRGD significantly improved the anticancer effect of the recombinant protein izTRAIL in HT-1080 human fibrosarcoma grafts in BALB/c nude mice. Consistent with this finding, multicellular TRAIL-resistance may be a reason of inefficacy of izTRAIL alone in vivo. The anticancer effect of the recombinant protein izTRAIL in vivo may be improved in combination with sorafenib, an inhibitor of multicellular TRAIL resistance and iRGD, the tumor-penetrating peptide.

Highlights

  • One of the main problems of oncology is the creation of drugs that cause the death of cancer cells with no damage to the cells of healthy tissues [1]

  • Our study demonstrated that the toxic effects of izTRAIL were different significantly in the nonconfluent and confluent cultures of human fibrosarcoma cells HT-1080

  • To evaluate the density-dependent toxic effect of the recombinant protein izTRAIL, cell cultures were treated with izTRAIL in 1 day and 4 days after seeding of 104 cells per well

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Summary

Introduction

One of the main problems of oncology is the creation of drugs that cause the death of cancer cells with no damage to the cells of healthy tissues [1] Another key problem is to suppress the drug resistance of cancer cells [2]. It was found that confluence-mediated TRAIL resistance may be suppressed by some target drugs, for instance by sorafenib, added at nontoxic concentrations [11]. These results indicate the opportunity to overcome multicellular TRAIL resistance of cancer cells using target drugs

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