Cinobufacini promotes apoptosis of bladder cancer cells by influencing the expression of autophagy-related genes

Cinobufacini suppresses malignant behaviors of endometrial cancer by regulating NF-κB pathway

Cinobufagin has inhibitory effects on various tumors, but there are few studies on gynecological tumors. This study explored the function and molecular mechanism of cinobufagin in endometrial cancer (EC). Different concentrations of cinobufagin treated EC cells (Ishikawa and HEC-1). Clone formation, methyl thiazolyl tetrazolium (MTT), flow cytometry, and transwell assays were used to detect malignant behaviors. A Western blot assay was performed to detect protein expression. Cinobufacini was sensitive to the inhibition of EC cell proliferation in a time- and concentration-dependent manner. Meanwhile, EC cell apoptosis was induced by cinobufacini. In addition, cinobufacini impaired the invasive and migratory abilities of EC cells. More importantly, cinobufacini blocked the nuclear factor kappa beta (NF-κB) pathway in EC by inhibiting p-IkBα and p-p65 expression. Cinobufacini suppresses malignant behaviors of EC by blocking the NF-κB pathway.

Chemical Composition, Pharmacological Effects and Clinical Applications of Cinobufacini

Chinese medicine cinobufacini is an extract from the dried skin of Bufo bufo gargarizans Cantor, with active ingredients of bufadienolides and indole alkaloids. With further research and clinical applications, it is found that cinobufacini alone or in combination with other therapeutic methods can play an anti-tumor role by controlling proliferation of tumor cells, promoting apoptosis, inhibiting formation of tumor neovascularization, reversing multidrug resistance, and regulating immune response; it also has the functions of relieving cancer pain and regulating immune function. In this paper, the chemical composition, pharmacological effects, clinical applications, and adverse reactions of cinobufacini are summarized. However, the extraction of monomer components of cinobufacini, the relationship between different mechanisms, and the causes of adverse reactions need to be further studied. Also, high-quality clinical studies should be conducted.

Comparative Pharmacokinetics of Cinobufacini Capsule and Injection by UPLC-MS/MS

Cinobufacini capsule and injection are two different formulations from the same source, obtained from the extraction of the skin of Bufo bufo gargarizans Cantor, which have been approved by the Chinese State Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) for the treatment of various cancers. Our previous study has found that the cinobufacini capsule and injection exhibited different anticancer effects, but their different pharmacokinetic behaviors, which could give a cause of that, have never been reported. So a sensitive and selective method for the simultaneous quantitation of 13 compounds in the rat plasma, including bufothionine, hellebrigenin, bufalin, gamabufotalin, telocinobufagin, cinobufagin, arenobufagin, cinobufotalin, desacetylcinobufotalin, bufotalin, pseudobufarenogin, resibufogenin, and desacetylcinobufagin, was established by using the Agilent 6460 mass spectrometer equipped with an ESI ion source in a multiple-reaction monitoring (MRM) mode. Chromatographic analysis was accomplished in 6 min by using an Agilent SB-C18 column and a mobile phase consisting of 0.1% formic acid in water and acetonitrile in an optimized gradient program at a flow rate of 0.3 ml/min. The correlation coefficients (r) of all analytes ranged from 0.9967 to 0.9996, while their lower limits of quantification ranged from 0.20 to 4.84 ng/ml. The method has been fully verified and applied for the pharmacokinetic difference study of the Cinobufacini capsule and injection in rats. The results showed that nine components could be quantitated in rat plasma samples after the administration of the cinobufacini capsule, while only bufothionine, bufalin, arenobufagin, and pseudobufarenogin could be detected in the cinobufacini injection group. Their pharmacokinetic studies indicated telocinobufagin, bufalin, desacetylcinobufagin, and arenobufagin were predicted as the potential active substances of the Cinobufacini capsule, while bufothionine was considered as a major ingredient in the cinobufacini injection due to its relatively high blood drug exposure. Also, the AUC of the nine components in cinobufacini capsule groups with three different doses showed a similar trend with significant differences, and the exposure increased with the increase of the dose. The pharmacokinetic characteristics of all major ingredients in cinobufacini capsules and injection were of wide variation, which could be used to explain differences in the efficacy of the cinobufacini capsule and injection and infer the pharmacodynamic ingredients of various cinobufacini preparations.

Machine learning identifies two autophagy-related genes as markers of recurrence in colorectal cancer

OBJECTIVE

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the most common cancer worldwide. Patient outcomes following recurrence of CRC are very poor. Therefore, identifying the risk of CRC recurrence at an early stage would improve patient care. Accumulating evidence shows that autophagy plays an active role in tumorigenesis, recurrence, and metastasis.

METHODS

We used machine learning algorithms and two regression models, univariable Cox proportion and least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO), to identify 26 autophagy-related genes (ARGs) related to CRC recurrence.

RESULTS

By functional annotation, these ARGs were shown to be enriched in necroptosis and apoptosis pathways. Protein-protein interactions identified SQSTM1, CASP8, HSP80AB1, FADD, and MAPK9 as core genes in CRC autophagy. Of 26 ARGs, BAX and PARP1 were regarded as having the most significant predictive ability of CRC recurrence, with prediction accuracy of 71.1%.

CONCLUSION

These results shed light on prediction of CRC recurrence by ARGs. Stratification of patients into recurrence risk groups by testing ARGs would be a valuable tool for early detection of CRC recurrence.

A predicted risk score based on the expression of 16 autophagy-related genes for multiple myeloma survival

Autophagy has an important role in the pathogenesis of plasma cell development and multiple myeloma (MM); however, the prognostic role of autophagy-related genes (ARGs) in MM remains undefined. In the present study, the expression profiles of 234 ARGs were obtained from a Gene Expression Omnibus dataset (accession GSE24080), which contains 559 samples of patients with MM analyzed with 54,675 probes. Univariate Cox regression analysis identified 55 ARGs that were significantly associated with event-free survival of MM. Furthermore, a risk score with 16 survival-associated ARGs was developed using multivariate Cox regression analysis, including ATIC, BNIP3L, CALCOCO2, DNAJB1, DNAJB9, EIF4EBP1, EVA1A, FKBP1B, FOXO1, FOXO3, GABARAP, HIF1A, NCKAP1, PRKAR1A and SUPT20H, was constructed. Using this prognostic signature, patients with MM could be separated into high- and low-risk groups with distinct clinical outcomes. The area under the curve values for the receiver operating characteristic curves were 0.740, 0.741 and 0.712 for 3, 5 and 10 years prognosis predictions, respectively. Notably, the prognostic role of this risk score could be validated with another four independent cohorts (accessions: GSE57317, GSE4581, GSE4452 and GSE4204). In conclusion, ARGs may serve vital roles in the progression of MM, and the ARGs-based prognostic model may provide novel ideas for clinical applications in MM.

Cinobufacini Injection Improves the Efficacy of Chemotherapy on Advanced Stage Gastric Cancer: A Systemic Review and Meta-Analysis

Gastric cancer has a high morbidity and mortality. Chemotherapy regimens are routine advanced stage gastric cancer (AGC) treatment protocols, but most of these drugs have side-effects such as myelosuppression and gastrointestinal disorders. Cinobufacini, an extractive from TCM, could suppress cell proliferation and inhibit gastric cancer. In this study, we comprehensively reviewed the literature on the efficacy comparison between Cinobufacini injection combined with chemotherapy and chemotherapy solely used in AGC treatment. We extracted data for from six electronic databases to evaluate the efficacy of Cinobufacini injection on AGC patients. Twelve studies with a total of 853 patients were finally included in our study. The results indicated that Cinobufacini injection could increase response rate and disease control rate of chemotherapy on AGC, improve the life quality of AGC patients, increase leukocytes, improve anemia, improve hand-foot syndrome induced by chemotherapy, and relieve cancer pain. This study has its own limitations that prevented us from drawing a definite conclusion and more well-designed clinical trials of TCM are needed.