Research Paper Volume 13, Issue 12 pp 16009—16023
Calycosin inhibits breast cancer cell migration and invasion by suppressing EMT via BATF/TGF-β1
- 1 School of Life Sciences and Food Engineering, Hanshan Normal University, Chaozhou 521041, Guangdong, China
- 2 Center of Reproductive Medicine, Affiliated Hospital of Youjiang Medical University for Nationalities, Baise 533000, Guangxi, China
- 3 School of Pharmacy, Youjiang Medical University for Nationalities, Baise 533000, Guangxi, China
Received: October 1, 2020 Accepted: April 29, 2021 Published: June 7, 2021
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.203093How to Cite
Copyright: © 2021 Zhang 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
In this study, we investigated the effects of calycosin on breast cancer cell progression and their underlying mechanisms. Calycosin dose- and time-dependently inhibited proliferation, migration, and invasion by T47D and MCF-7 breast cancer cells by downregulating basic leucine zipper ATF-like transcription factor (BATF) expression. Moreover, BATF promoted breast cancer cell migration and invasiveness by increasing TGFβ1 mRNA and protein levels. Bioinformatics analysis, dual luciferase reporter assays, and chromatin immunoprecipitation assays confirmed the presence of BATF-binding sites in the promoter sequence of TGFβ1 gene. Calycosin treatment inhibited epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) of breast cancer cells by significantly increasing E-cadherin levels and decreasing N-cadherin, Vimentin, CD147, MMP-2, and MMP-9 levels through downregulation of BATF and TGFβ1. TGFβ1 knockdown reduced the migration and invasiveness of BATF-overexpressing breast cancer cells, whereas incubation with TGFβ1 enhanced the migration and invasiveness of calycosin-treated breast cancer cells. Our findings demonstrated that calycosin inhibited EMT and progression of breast cancer cells by suppressing BATF/TGFβ1 signaling. This suggests calycosin would be a promising therapeutic option for breast cancer patients.