Antitumoral effect of Ocoxin, a natural compound-containing nutritional supplement, in small cell lung cancer

Microenvironmental Reactive Oxygen Species in Colorectal Cancer: Involved Processes and Therapeutic Opportunities

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the fourth most common cause of cancer deaths worldwide. Although screening programs have reduced mortality rates, there is a need for research focused on finding the main factors that lead primary CRC to progress and metastasize. During tumor progression, malignant cells modify their habitat, corrupting or transforming cells of different origins and creating the tumor microenvironment (TME). Cells forming the TME like macrophages, neutrophils, and fibroblasts generate reactive oxygen species (ROS) that modify the cancer niche. The effects of ROS in cancer are very diverse: they promote cellular proliferation, epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT), evasion of cell death programs, migration, and angiogenesis. Due to the multifaceted role of ROS in cancer cell survival and function, ROS-modulating agents such as antioxidants or pro-oxidants could have therapeutic potential in cancer prevention and/or as a complement to systemic treatments. In this review, we will examine the main ROS producer cells and their effects on cancer progression and metastasis. Furthermore, we will enumerate the latest clinical trials where pro-oxidants and antioxidants have therapeutic uses in CRC.

Ocoxin oral solution demonstrates antiviral properties in cellular models

Ocoxin Oral Solution (OOS) and Viusid (VS) are nutritional supplements that include several natural products which affect different cellular functions, such as proliferation or the redox status. In addition, some of their constituent components have been described to exert an antiviral effect. Considering this, it was hypothesized that treatment with OOS and VS could protect from viral infections. In order to evaluate the impact of OOS and VS on viral infection, lentivirus and retrovirus whose genomes coded for green fluorescent protein were used. In addition, and as a second approach to measure viral infection, a hemagglutinin-tagged form of the mitogen-activated protein kinase ERK5 was also inserted in the retroviral vector. Viral particles produced in 293T cells were used to infect HeLa cells in the presence or absence of OOS or VS. It was observed that VS had a minimal effect on the capacity of either lentivirus or retrovirus to infect HeLa cells. However, OOS significantly reduced the infection of HeLa cells with both of these viruses. The effect was dose-dependent, reaching a maximum at a 1:100 dilution of OOS. These results suggested that, in addition to its well-known antitumoral properties, OOS may also inhibit infection with viruses. This effect is relevant since patients receiving oncological therapies are more susceptible to viral infections, and nutritional supplements such as OOS may help in reducing the severity of these potential pathogenic infections.

Ocoxin Increases the Antitumor Effect of BRAF Inhibition and Reduces Cancer Associated Fibroblast-Mediated Chemoresistance and Protumoral Activity in Metastatic Melanoma

Whereas the prevalence of several cancer types is decreasing, skin malignancies are growing more common every year. Malignant melanoma is the most aggressive form of skin cancer with high metastatic capacity. In most cases, malignant melanoma shows acquired therapy resistance. We evaluated the ability of Ocoxin, a natural compound-based antioxidant and anti-inflammatory nutritional complement, to exert an antitumor effect in melanoma. To do so, the cytotoxicity of Ocoxin in a panel of BRAF-mutated murine and human melanoma cell lines was tested alone and in combination with BRAF inhibitor Vemurafenib. Our results revealed a potent cytotoxic effect of Ocoxin against melanoma cells and a synergic effect when combined with Vemurafenib, reducing viability and increasing apoptosis. Besides, Ocoxin interferes with the cell cycle, impairs the inherent and fibroblast-mediated melanoma cell migration, and reduces resistance to BRAF inhibition. Proteomic analysis revealed reduced tumor secretion of inflammatory factors Galectin-1, Osteopontin, CCL5, and CCL9 upon treatment with Ocoxin. Moreover, RNASeq showed that Ocoxin downregulated the cell cycle and proliferation-related genes. In vivo, Ocoxin reduced the number of lung metastasis of YUMM-1.7 melanoma cells. Therefore, Ocoxin arises as a good candidate for clinical trials analyzing the beneficial effects in patients suffering from this cutaneous malignancy.

Ocoxin as a complement to first line treatments in cancer

Chemotherapy and radiotherapy are the most frequent treatment for patients suffering from malignant progression of cancer. Even though new treatments are now being implemented, administration of these chemotherapeutic agents remains as the first line option in many tumor types. However, the secondary effects of these compounds represent one of the main reasons cancer patients lose life quality during disease progression. Recent data suggests that Ocoxin, a plant extract and natural compound based nutritional complement rich in antioxidants and anti-inflammatory mediators exerts a positive effect in patients receiving chemotherapy and radiotherapy. This mixture attenuates the chemotherapy and radiotherapy-related side effects such as radiation-induced skin burns and mucositis, chemotherapy-related diarrhea, hepatic toxicity and blood-infection. Moreover, it has been proven to be effective as anticancer agent in different tumor models both in vitro and in vivo, potentiating the cytotoxic effect of several chemotherapy compounds such as Lapatinib, Gemcitabine, Paclitaxel, Sorafenib and Irinotecan. The aim of this review is to put some light on the potential of this nutritional mixture as an anticancer agent and complement for the standard chemotherapy routine.

Antitumoral Properties of the Nutritional Supplement Ocoxin Oral Solution: A Comprehensive Review

Ocoxin Oral Solution (OOS) is a nutritional supplement whose formulation includes several plant extracts and natural products with demonstrated antitumoral properties. This review summarizes the antitumoral action of the different constituents of OOS. The action of this formulation on different preclinical models as well as clinical trials is reviewed, paying special attention to the mechanism of action and quality of life improvement properties of this nutritional supplement. Molecularly, its mode of action includes a double edge role on tumor biology, that involves a slowdown in cell proliferation accompanied by cell death induction. Given the safety and good tolerability of OOS, and its potentiation of the antitumoral effect of other standard of care drugs, OOS may be used in the oncology clinic in combination with conventional therapies.

Central Role of Cell Cycle Regulation in the Antitumoral Action of Ocoxin

Nutritional supplements which include natural antitumoral compounds could represent safe and efficient additives for cancer patients. One such nutritional supplement, Ocoxin Oral solution (OOS), is a composite formulation that contains several antioxidants and exhibits antitumoral properties in several in vitro and in vivo tumor conditions. Here, we performed a functional genomic analysis to uncover the mechanism of the antitumoral action of OOS. Using in vivo models of acute myelogenous leukemia (AML, HEL cells, representative of a liquid tumor) and small-cell lung cancer (GLC-8, representative of a solid tumor), we showed that OOS treatment altered the transcriptome of xenografted tumors created by subcutaneously implanting these cells. Functional transcriptomic studies pointed to a cell cycle deregulation after OOS treatment. The main pathway responsible for this deregulation was the E2F-TFDP route, which was affected at different points. The alterations ultimately led to a decrease in pathway activation. Moreover, when OOS-deregulated genes in the AML context were analyzed in patient samples, a clear correlation with their levels and prognosis was observed. Together, these data led us to suggest that the antitumoral effect of OOS is due to blockade of cell cycle progression mainly caused by the action of OOS on the E2F-TFDP pathway.

Autoencoder Based Feature Selection Method for Classification of Anticancer Drug Response

Anticancer drug responses can be varied for individual patients. This difference is mainly caused by genetic reasons, like mutations and RNA expression. Thus, these genetic features are often used to construct classification models to predict the drug response. This research focuses on the feature selection issue for the classification models. Because of the vast dimensions of the feature space for predicting drug response, the autoencoder network was first built, and a subset of inputs with the important contribution was selected. Then by using the Boruta algorithm, a further small set of features was determined for the random forest, which was used to predict drug response. Two datasets, GDSC and CCLE, were used to illustrate the efficiency of the proposed method.

Prodigiosin-Emerged PI3K/Beclin-1-Independent Pathway Elicits Autophagic Cell Death in Doxorubicin-Sensitive and -Resistant Lung Cancer

Prodigiosin (PG) belongs to a family of prodiginines isolated from gram-negative bacteria. It is a water insoluble red pigment and a potent proapoptotic compound. This study elucidates the anti-tumor activity and underlying mechanism of PG in doxorubicin-sensitive (Dox-S) and doxorubicin-resistant (Dox-R) lung cancer cells. The cytotoxicity and cell death characteristics of PG in two cells were measured by MTT assay, cell cycle analysis, and apoptosis/autophagic marker analysis. Then, the potential mechanism of PG-induced cell death was evaluated through the phosphatidylinositol-4,5-bisphosphate 3-kinase-p85/Protein kinase B /mammalian target of rapamycin (PI3K-p85/Akt/mTOR) and Beclin-1/phosphatidylinositol-4,5-bisphosphate 3-kinase-Class III (Beclin-1/PI3K-Class III) signaling. Finally, in vivo efficacy was examined by intratracheal inoculation and treatment. There was similar cytotoxicity with PG in both Dox-S and Dox-R cells, where the half maximal inhibitory concentrations (IC₅₀) were all in 10 μM. Based on a non-significant increase in the sub-G₁ phase with an increase of microtubule-associated proteins 1A/1B light chain 3B-phosphatidylethanolamine conjugate (LC3-II), the cell death of both cells was categorized to achieve autophagy. Interestingly, an increase in cleaved-poly ADP ribose polymerase (cleaved-PARP) also showed the existence of an apoptosis-sensitive subpopulation. In both Dox-S and Dox-R cells, PI3K-p85/Akt/mTOR signaling pathways were reduced, which inhibited autophagy initiation. However, Beclin-1/PI3K-Class III downregulation implicated non-canonical autophagy pathways were involved in PG-induced autophagy. At completion of the PG regimen, tumors accumulated in the mice trachea and were attenuated by PG treatment, which indicated the efficacy of PG for both Dox-S and Dox-R lung cancer. All the above results concluded that PG is a potential chemotherapeutic agent for lung cancer regimens regardless of doxorubicin resistance.