1118-20, an indazole diarylurea compound, inhibits hepatocellular carcinoma HepG2 proliferation and tumour angiogenesis involving Wnt/β-catenin pathway and receptor tyrosine kinases

Navigating Tumour Microenvironment and Wnt Signalling Crosstalk: Implications for Advanced Cancer Therapeutics

Cancer therapeutics face significant challenges due to drug resistance and tumour recurrence. The tumour microenvironment (TME) is a crucial contributor and essential hallmark of cancer. It encompasses various components surrounding the tumour, including intercellular elements, immune system cells, the vascular system, stem cells, and extracellular matrices, all of which play critical roles in tumour progression, epithelial-mesenchymal transition, metastasis, drug resistance, and relapse. These components interact with multiple signalling pathways, positively or negatively influencing cell growth. Abnormal regulation of the Wnt signalling pathway has been observed in tumorigenesis and contributes to tumour growth. A comprehensive understanding and characterisation of how different cells within the TME communicate through signalling pathways is vital. This review aims to explore the intricate and dynamic interactions, expressions, and alterations of TME components and the Wnt signalling pathway, offering valuable insights into the development of therapeutic applications.

Attenuation of cartilage pathogenesis in osteoarthritis by blocking the phosphorylation of tyrosine kinase Fyn to β-catenin, AZD0530

OBJECTIVE

To observe the effect of AZD0530 on the progression of knee OA after blocking β-catenin phosphorylation and then dormancy of the Wnt/β pathway by tyrosine kinase Fyn.

METHODS

The levels of Fyn, β-catenin, p-β-catenin (Tyr142), the chondrocyte positive marker Aggrecan, and the chondrocyte negative marker MMP13 were observed in human knee tibial plateau chondrocytes in vivo and in vitro. Different doses of AZD0530 were used to treat chondrocytes of the human OA tibial plateau chondrocytes in vitro, and the degree of chondrocyte degeneration was observed. Different doses of AZD0530 were intraarticularly injected into OA rats to observe the degree of tibial plateau cartilage degeneration.

RESULTS

When OA occurred in human knee, the levels of tyrosine kinase Fyn,β-catenin and p-β-catenin (Tyr142) in chondrocytes increased significantly.The level of Aggrecan decreased and MMP13 increased in chondrocytes. The levels of β-catenin, p-β-catenin (Tyr142) and MMP13 in chondrocytes decreased, while the level of Aggrecan increased after AZD0530 was used to intervene chondrocytes in vitro, which was positively correlated with the dose of AZD0530. Intra-articular injection of AZD0530 obviously attenuated the degeneration of articular cartilage, which was positively correlated with the dose of AZD0530.

CONCLUSION

The level of Fyn in chondrocytes of human knee tibial plateau increased significantly when OA occurred. AZD0530 can inhibit tyrosine kinase Fyn from β-catenin phosphorylation, a key Wnt/β pathway protein, and then inhibit Wnt/β pathway levels in chondrocytes. This finding also suggests that disruption of the Wnt/β pathway with AZD0530 provides chondral protection in rat posttraumatic OA.

The Anticancer Activity of Indazole Compounds: A Mini Review

The incidence and mortality of cancer continue to grow since the current medical treatments often fail to produce a complete and durable tumor response and ultimately give rise to therapy resistance and tumor relapse. Heterocycles with potential therapeutic values are of great pharmacological importance, and among them, indazole moiety is a privileged structure in medicinal chemistry. Indazole compounds possess potential anticancer activity, and indazole-based agents such as, axitinib, lonidamine and pazopanib have already been employed for cancer therapy, demonstrating indazole compounds as useful templates for the development of novel anticancer agents. The aim of this review is to present the main aspects of exploring anticancer properties, such as the structural modifications, the structure-activity relationship and mechanisms of action, making an effort to highlight the importance and therapeutic potential of the indazole compounds in the present anticancer agents.

Recent applications of Rose Bengal catalysis in N-heterocycles: a short review

The visible light harnessing ability of Rose Bengal, an organic dye, has been extensively employed in organic chemistry over the last few years. In visible light mediated reactions, this photoredox catalyst operates through multiple pathways and has the ability to provide distinctly different and valuable results. The most significant of these results are bond creation, bond functionalization, particularly for C–H and C–heteroatom bonds, and cross couplings. It is crucial to study these cases whenever these bond formations and couplings lead to the formation of heterocyclic compounds or their functionalization. The diverse biological activity and medicinal applications of heterocyclic compounds is an extensively explored area. This review primarily attempts to demonstrate the synthetic potential of Rose Bengal for synthesis and site selective functionalization of nitrogen containing heterocycles.

The recent applications of Rose Bengal as a photocatalyst for the synthesis and functionalization of N-heterocycles have been discussed.

DHPAC, a novel synthetic microtubule destabilizing agent, possess high anti-tumor activity in vincristine-resistant oral epidermoid carcinoma in vitro and in vivo

Multidrug resistance (MDR) is one of major obstacles to effective chemotherapeutic treatment of cancer. This study showed that DHPAC, 2-(6-ethoxy-3-(3-ethoxyphenylamino) -1-methyl-1,4-dihydroindeno[1,2-c]pyrazol-7-yloxy) acetamide, a novel compound that binds to the same site on microtubules as colchicine, has high anti-tumour activity in vincristine-resistant oral epidermoid carcinoma (KB/V) cells. It found that the presence of DHPAC strongly inhibited KB/V cell growth in vivo and in mice xenograft. The inhibitory effect of DHPAC is much stronger than that by colchicine in these KB/V cells (IC₅₀: 64.4nM and 458.0nM respectively). Treatment of the cells with DHPAC induced cell apoptosis by reducing mitochondrial membrane potential and altered the expression of several apoptosis-related proteins such as Bcl-2, Bax, Caspase-9, Cytochrome c and PARP. DHPAC treatment also caused cell rest in G2/M phase by regulating of the expression of a number of cell cycle-related proteins (e.g. Cyclin B1, Cdc2, Cdc25b, Cdc25c, RSK2). Furthermore, DHPAC presence inhibits PTEN phosphorylation and PTEN/Akt/NF-κB signalling. Thus, DHPAC has potent anti-cancer activity in MDR tumuors and may be a potential therapeutic agent for the treatment of vincristine-resistant human oral epidermoid carcinoma.

The Recent Advances on Liver Cancer Stem Cells: Biomarkers, Separation, and Therapy

As the third major reason of mortality related to cancer in the world, liver cancer is also the fifth most frequent cancer. Unluckily, a majority of patients succumb and relapse though many progresses have been made in detection and therapy of liver cancer. It has been put forward that in liver cancer, cancer stem cells (CSCs) hold main responsibility for the formation, invasion, metastasis, and recurrence of tumor. Strategies that are intended to target liver CSCs are playing a more and more significant role in supervising the development of liver cancer treatment and assessing new therapeutic methods. Herein, a brief review about molecule markers, signal pathways, separation, and treatment on liver cancer stem cells (LCSCs) is provided in this paper.

Pekinenin E Inhibits the Growth of Hepatocellular Carcinoma by Promoting Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress Mediated Cell Death

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a malignant primary liver cancer with poor prognosis. In the present study, we report that pekinenin E (PE), a casbane diterpenoid derived from the roots of Euphorbia pekinensis, has a strong antitumor activity against human HCC cells both in vitro and in vivo. PE suppressed the growth of human HCC cells Hep G2 and SMMC-7721. In addition, PE-mediated endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress caused increasing expressions of C/EBP homologous protein (CHOP), leading to apoptosis in HCC cells both in vitro and in vivo. Inhibition of ER stress with CHOP small interfering RNA or 4-phenyl-butyric acid partially reversed PE-induced cell death. Furthermore, PE induced S cell cycle arrest, which could also be partially reversed by CHOP knockdown. In all, these findings suggest that PE causes ER stress-associated cell death and cell cycle arrest, and it may serve as a potent agent for curing human HCC.