Research Paper Volume 12, Issue 13 pp 13633—13646
Melatonin protects against apoptosis of megakaryocytic cells via its receptors and the AKT/mitochondrial/caspase pathway
- 1 The Seventh Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-Sen University, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China
- 2 Nanfang Hospital, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China
- 3 Lianjiang People’s Hospital, Lianjiang, Guangdong, China
- 4 State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol, School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China
- 5 The Seventh Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-Sen University, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China.
Received: February 27, 2020 Accepted: May 27, 2020 Published: July 10, 2020
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.103483How to Cite
Copyright © 2020 Yang et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Clinical studies have shown that melatonin lowers the frequency of thrombocytopenia in patients with cancer undergoing radiotherapy or chemotherapy. Here, we investigated the mechanisms by which melatonin promotes platelet formation and survival. Our results show that melatonin exerted protective effects on serum-free induced apoptosis of CHRF megakaryocytes (MKs). Melatonin promoted the formation of MK colony forming units (CFUs) in a dose-dependent manner. Using doxorubicin-treated CHRF cells, we found that melatonin rescued G2/M cell cycle arrest and cell apoptosis induced by doxorubicin. The expression of p-AKT was increased by melatonin treatment, an effect that was abolished by melatonin receptor blocker. In addition, we demonstrated that melatonin enhanced the recovery of platelets in an irradiated mouse model. Megakaryopoiesis was largely preserved in melatonin-treated mice. We obtained the same results in vivo from bone marrow histology and CFU-MK formation assays. Melatonin may exert these protective effects by directly stimulating megakaryopoiesis and inhibiting megakaryocyte apoptosis through activation of its receptors and AKT signaling.