Research Paper|Volume 13, Issue 23|pp 25365—25376

Anemoside B4 sensitizes human colorectal cancer to fluorouracil-based chemotherapy through src-mediated cell apoptosis

Xing He¹, Jun Tang¹, He-Zhong Yan¹, Jiao-Xue Wang¹, Hai-Qing Li¹, Xiao-Wei Duan¹, Sen-Yuan Yu¹, Xi-Lu Hou¹, Guo-Bin Liao¹, Wei Liu¹

¹Department of Gastroenterology, The 901 Hospital of Joint Logistics Support Force, Hefei 230031, Anhui, China

Received: January 16, 2021Accepted: August 11, 2021Published: December 10, 2021

https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.203751

Copyright: © 2021 He 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, 5-Fluorouracil (5-FU) based chemotherapy is the primary option for colorectal cancer after surgery, whereas chemotherapy resistance related mortality is observed in a large proportion of patients. Anemoside B4 (AB4) is a triterpene saponin, which exhibits a considerable activity in oncotherapy. In this study, we explored the efficacy of AB4 in FU-based chemotherapy in colorectal cancer cells and the underlying molecular mechanisms. Our results indicated a significant synergistic activity of AB4 in 5-FU treated colorectal cancer cells. Furthermore, AB4 treatment eliminated colorectal cancer stem cells by promoting apoptotic cell death in 5-FU resistant colorectal cancer cells. Mechanically, AB4 activated caspase-9 pathway in 5-FU resistant colorectal cancer cells. Elevated Src activity induced cell apoptosis and cancer stem cells elimination effects in AB4 treated colorectal cancer cells. In conclusion, AB4 showed promising sensitization effect in the FU-based chemotherapy of colorectal cancer. Our study may pave a way to ameliorate FU-based chemotherapeutic efficiency in colorectal cancer.