Journal of Pharmacological Sciences (Jan 2007)

2-Hydroxycinnamaldehyde Inhibits SW620 Colon Cancer Cell Growth Through AP-1 Inactivation

  • Chung Woo Lee,
  • Seung Ho Lee,
  • Jae Woong Lee,
  • Jung Ok Ban,
  • So Yong Lee,
  • Han Soo Yoo,
  • Jae Kyung Jung,
  • Dong Cheul Moon,
  • Ki Wan Oh,
  • Jin Tae Hong

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 104, no. 1
pp. 19 – 28

Abstract

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Cinnamaldehyde derivatives isolated from Cinnamomum cassia have been widely used for treating dyspepsia, gastritis, and inflammatory disease as well as cancer. To investigate the anti-tumor activities of several cinnamaldehyde derivatives, we compared the inhibitory effect of cinnamaldehyde derivatives on cell growth and AP-1 transcriptional activity in SW620 human colon cancer cells since AP-1 is a transcriptional factor implicated to control cancer cell growth. Among the derivatives, 2’-hydroxycinnamaldehyde (HCA) most significantly inhibited cancer cell growth and AP-1 transcriptional activity in a dose-dependent manner with an IC50 value of 12.5 and 9 µg/ml, respectively. In further studies on the mechanism, we found that consistent with the inhibitory effect on cell growth, HCA dose-dependently (0 – 20 µg/ml) inhibited DNA binding activity of AP-1 accompanied with down regulation of c-Jun and c-Fos expressions. HCA also induced apoptotic cell death as well as expression of the apoptosis-regulating gene caspase-3, but inhibited the anti-apoptosis regulating gene bcl-2 in a dose-dependent manner. These results suggested that HCA has the most potent inhibitory effect against human colon cancer cell growth, and AP-1 may be an important target of HCA. Keywords:: 2’-hydroxycinnamaldehyde (HCA), AP-1, colon cancer, cell growth inhibition