Roles of dopamine receptors and their antagonist thioridazine in hepatoma metastasis

In: info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/doi/10.2147/OTT.S77373

Abstract

Meiling Lu,1,* Jinghua Li,1,* Zaili Luo,2,3,* Shuai Zhang,3 Shaobo Xue,1 Kesheng Wang,1 Yan Shi,4 Cunzhen Zhang,3 Haiyang Chen,3 Zhong Li1,5 1Central Laboratory, The 10th People's Hospital, Tongji University, Shanghai, People's Republic of China; 2International Cooperation Laboratory on Signal Transduction, Eastern Hepatobiliary Surgery Institute/Hospital, The Second Military Medical University, Shanghai, People's Republic of China; 3Institution of Biomedical Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai, People's Republic of China; 4Department of Gastroenterology, The 10th People's Hospital, Tongji University, Shanghai, People's Republic of China; 5Zhangjiang Center for Translational Medicine, Shanghai, People's Republic of China *These authors contributed equally to this work Abstract: Tumor metastasis is the most common cause of death and poor prognosis for cancer patients. Therapeutics that prevent tumor metastasis are the key to prolonging the lifespan of cancer patients. Cancer stem cells are believed to be critical in the metastatic process. Recently, drug screening for cancer stem cells reports that antipsychotic drugs displayed potential anticancer activity. Thioridazine, one of the antipsychotic drugs for dopamine receptors (DRs), is shown to induce the differentiation of cancer stem cells in leukemic disease and breast cancer, but it is not known if this drug would affect liver cancer. In this study, expression of DR5 was higher in tumors than in nontumor adjacent tissues, while DR1 was lower in human hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) than those in the adjacent tissues. Other DRs were very low or undetectable. Treatment of HCC cells with thioridazine displays a dose-dependent response in HCC cell lines SNU449, LM3, and Huh7. Thioridazine treatment reduced cell viability and sphere formation of HCC cell lines through induction of G0/G1 cell cycle arrest and suppression of stemness genes CD133, OCT4, and EpCam. It also inhibited cell migration via suppression of epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT)-related genes such as twist2 and E-cadherin. Thioridazine-pretreated LM3 cells decreased the capacity of tumorigenesis in nude mice. Taken together, our data suggest that thioridazine may have the potential role in treatment of HCC. Keywords: antipsychotic, thioridazine, HCC, dopamine receptors, metastasis