Research Paper Volume 13, Issue 21 pp 24101—24116

Curcumol inhibits malignant biological behaviors and TMZ-resistance in glioma cells by inhibiting long noncoding RNA FOXD2-As1-promoted EZH2 activation

Xuyang Lv1, *, , Jiangchuan Sun1, *, , Linfeng Hu1, , Ying Qian1, , Chunlei Fan1, , Nan Tian1, ,

  • 1 Molecular Medicine Institute, Life Science College, Zhejiang Chinese Medical University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China
* Equal contribution

Received: April 3, 2021       Accepted: October 25, 2021       Published: November 5, 2021      

https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.203662
How to Cite

Copyright: © 2021 Lv 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

Currently, conventional treatment is not sufficient to improve the survival of glioma patients. Hence, adopting novel personalized treatment programs is imperative. Curcumol, a Chinese herbal medicine extract from the roots of Rhizoma Curcumae, has attracted significant interest due to its beneficial pharmacological activities. The current study revealed that curcumol inhibited the proliferation, metastasis, self-renewal ability, and TMZ resistance in glioma cells in vitro and in vivo. Next, the potential molecular mechanisms of curcumol in inhibiting glioma were investigated. We found that the long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) FOXD2-As1 might contribute to the effects of curcumol on glioma cells. Enforced expression of FOXD2-As1 attenuated the curcumol-induced reduction in glioma cell proliferation, metastasis, self-renewal ability, and TMZ resistance. Moreover, the forced expression of FOXD2-As1 reversed the inhibitory effect of curcumol on the binding ability of EZH2 and H3K27me3 modification in the promoter regions of anti-oncogenes. Our results showed for the first time that curcumol is effective in inhibiting malignant biological behaviors and TMZ-resistance of glioma cells by suppressing FOXD2-As1-mediated EZH2 activation. Our study offers the possibility of exploiting curcumol as a promising therapeutic agent for glioma treatment and may provide an option for the clinical application of this natural herbal medicine.

Abbreviations

TCM: Traditional Chinese medicine; EZH2: enhancer of zeste homolog 2; PcG: polycomb group; PRC2: polycomb repressive complex 2; H3K27me3: methylation of histone 3 lysine 27; MGMT: O6-methylguanine-DNA methyltransferase; DMSO: Dulbecco’s Modified Eagle Medium; FBS: fetal calf serum; DAPI: 4′6-diamidino-2-phenylindole; PMSF: phenylmethanesulfonylfluoride.