Gigantol Attenuates the Metastasis of Human Bladder Cancer Cells, Possibly Through Wnt/EMT Signaling

Meili Zhao; Yangyang Sun; Zhen Gao; Hongqiu Cui; Jianbin Chen; Meina Wang; Zhicai Wang

doi:10.2147/OTT.S271032

Gigantol Attenuates the Metastasis of Human Bladder Cancer Cells, Possibly Through Wnt/EMT Signaling

Onco Targets Ther. 2020 Nov 4:13:11337-11346. doi: 10.2147/OTT.S271032. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Meili Zhao^{1

2}, Yangyang Sun³, Zhen Gao³, Hongqiu Cui^{1

2}, Jianbin Chen^{1

2}, Meina Wang^{1

2}, Zhicai Wang^{1

2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of National Forestry and Grassland Administration for Orchid Conservation and Utilization (Shenzhen), Shenzhen 518114, People's Republic of China.
² Shenzhen Key Laboratory for Orchid Conservation and Utilization, The National Orchid Conservation Center of China and the Orchid Conservation & Research Center of Shenzhen, Shenzhen 518114, People's Republic of China.
³ Key Laboratory of Medical Reprogramming Technology, Shenzhen Second People's Hospital, The First Affiliated Hospital of Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518035, People's Republic of China.

Abstract

Background: Bladder cancer has long been recognized as one of the most common and aggressive human malignant carcinomas due to the increased invasiveness and metastasis. The discovery and development of natural compounds from Dendrobium species for cancer therapy have garnered increasing attention in recent years. Among those natural elements, the bibenzyl compound gigantol has promising therapeutic potential against several cancer cell lines; however, its roles on bladder tumor metastasis have not been investigated.

Materials and methods: Here in this in vitro study, we utilized viability tests, cell migration, cell invasion and apoptosis assays to evaluate the anti-tumor activity of gigantol on three human bladder cancer cell lines (SW780, 5637, and T24) and a normal human bladder cell line (SVHUC-1). Cells were treated with different concentrations of gigantol (0, 40, 80, and 160 µM) for 24, 48 and 72 h.

Results: Here in this study, we showed that gigantol suppressed cancer cell proliferation but not normal SVHUC-1 cells. The inhibitory effect of the compound on cell migration and invasion was also exhibited in the cancer cell lines. Cell apoptosis assay by flow cytometry revealed enhanced apoptotic effects of gigantol on cancer cells. Gene expression analysis revealed that Wnt/EMT signaling might involve in the response of bladder cancer cells to gigantol.

Conclusion: Therefore, the present data demonstrate gigantol as a strong anticancer reagent against bladder cancer possibly through Wnt/EMT signaling.

Keywords: Dendrobium; bladder cancer; gigantol; tumor metastasis.

Grants and funding

This work was financially supported by the Medical Science and Technology Research Fund Project of Guangdong Province (A2019093), the Research Grants for Postdocs Settle in Shenzhen from Shenzhen Government to Dr. ZC Wang, the Forestry Science and Technology Innovation Project of Guangdong (2017KJCX062) to Dr. MN Wang; and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81802537) to Dr. Z Gao. The authors are grateful to Dr. WR Huang at Shenzhen Second People’s Hospital for providing some of the regular reagents and research facilities used in this study.