Bee Product Royal Jelly Suppress EMT and Invasiveness of HCT-116 Cells

Abstract

The most frequent type of cancer, colorectal cancer (CRC), is widely recognized as the most common cause of death worldwide, due to the high invasive potential of cancer cells enabling metastasis. Cancer cells owe these properties to the epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT), which requires the overexpressed markers Snail and vimentin. Considering that natural products have been intensively investigated from an anticancer point of view, we aimed to investigate the effects of royal jelly, a natural bee product, on the invasiveness of the colorectal cancer cell line HCT-116 and the expression of these two proinvasive/EMT markers. Our study reports on the inhibited expression of Snail and vimentin in tested cells, due to which suppressed aforementioned potential was detected.

Keywords

• EMT
• Transwell test
• immunofluorescence
• collagen