Malignant melanoma is a critical and aggressive skin tumor with a steeply rising incidence and a less favorable prognosis due to the lack of efficient treatment. Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is a new promising treatment for this tumor through photosensitizers-mediated oxidative cytotoxicity. In this study, we explored the role of berberine-mediated PDT (BBR-PDT) in the anti-proliferative effect on human malignant melanoma cells (MMCs). We found that there were significant differences between MMCs with BBR-PDT and MMCs with BBR or PDT only. Further research showed that BBR-PDT induced apoptosis via up-regulating the expression of cleaved caspase-3 protein. We also observed that LC3-related autophagy level was upregulated in MMCs with BBR-PDT. Besides, it was also found that BBR-PDT activated endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress, involving a dramatic increase in reactive oxygen species (ROS). Interestingly, the knockdown of CHOP protein expression inhibited apoptosis, autophagy and ER stress levels caused by BBR-PDT, suggesting that CHOP protein may be related to apoptosis, autophagy and ER stress in MMCs with BBR-PDT. Collectively, our results indicated that BBR-PDT had an essential impact on MMCs' growth inhibition, and therefore may reveal the possibility of developing BBR-PDT into human malignant melanoma.
Keywords: Apoptosis; Autophagy; Berberine (BBR); C/EBP homologous Protein (CHOP/GADD153); Endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress; Photodynamic therapy (PDT).
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