Compound Kushen Injection suppresses human breast cancer stem-like cells by down-regulating the canonical Wnt/β-catenin pathway.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Cancer stem cells (CSCs) play an important role in cancer initiation, relapse and metastasis. To date, no specific medicine has been found to target CSCs as they are resistant to most conventional therapies and proliferate indefinitely. Compound Kushen Injection (CKI) has been widely used for cancer patients with remarkable therapeutic effects in Chinese clinical settings for many years. This study focused on whether CKI could inhibit MCF-7 SP cells in vitro and in vivo.

Methods

The analysis of CKI on SP population and the main genes of Wnt signaling pathway were studied first. Then we studied the tumorigenicity of SP cells and the effects of CKI on SP cells in vivo. The mice inoculated with 10,000 SP cells were randomly divided into three groups (6 in each group)

SUBMITTER: Xu W 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3219673 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature