Lung cancer stem cell (LCSC) is critical in cancer initiation, progression, drug resistance and relapse. Disadvantages showed in conventional lung cancer therapy probably because of its existence. In this study, lung cancer cell line A549 cells propagated as spheroid bodies (named as A549 sphere cells) in growth factors-defined serum-free medium. A549 sphere cells displayed CSC properties, incl...

Aberrant Ras pathway functions contribute to the malignant phenotype of lung cancers. Inhibitors of Ras might therefore be considered as potential drugs for lung cancer therapy. Here, we show that the Ras inhibitor farnesylthiosalicylic acid (salirasib) inhibits proliferation of human lung cancer cells harboring a mutated K-ras gene (A549, H23, or HTB54) or overexpressing a growth factor recept...

Distal metastasis is the major cause of death for the vast majority of lung cancer patients. Many extracellular matrix (ECM)-related molecules are proposed to be associated with the migration and invasion of cancer cells. FRAS1 encodes an ECM protein, however, little is known about its function on tumorigenesis and metastasis of lung cancer. In this work, FRAS1 was silenced by shRNA in non-smal...

Abstract Introduction Tight junctions (TJs) maintain cell adhesion. Modulation can promote dissociation/motility/ metastasis. Occludin is a transmembrane protein within TJs and may play role in TJ modulation. The aim of this research was to identify the expression human lung cancer its effect motility/dissociation. Methods qPCR used quantify transcripts cohort (n=80) (Peking University Cancer H...

BACKGROUND Non-small cell lung cancer is associated with high expression of multidrug resistance (MDR) proteins and low production of reactive oxygen species (ROS). Coptis extract (COP), a Chinese medicinal herb, and its major constituent, berberine (BER), have anticancer properties. This study aims to investigate the effects of COP and BER combined with chemotherapeutic agents, including fluor...

Background: Heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) is a cytoprotective and antiapoptotic enzyme, which has been involved in maintaining cellular homeostasis, and plays an important protective role by modulating oxidative injury. Up-regulation of (HO-1) has contributed to tumorogenicity of some cancers. In this study we investigated the expression pattern of the HO-1, in five different human-derived cancer cel...

Bone morphogenetic protein-2 (BMP-2) is an evolutionary conserved protein that is essential for embryonic development. BMP-2 is highly expressed in approximately 98% of human lung carcinomas with little expression in normal lung tissues. BMP-2 has been shown to enhance mobility, invasiveness, and metastasis of cancer cell lines. During development, BMP-2 induces the proto-oncogene phosphoinosit...

Bufalin is a class of toxic steroids which could induce the differentiation and apoptosis of leukemia cells, and induce the apoptosis of gastric, colon and breast cancer cells. However, the anti-tumor effects of bufalin have not been demonstrated in lung cancer. In this study we used A549 human lung adenocarcinoma epithelial cell line as the experimental model to evaluate the potential of bufal...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE Cisplatin is the first-line drug for the chemotherapy of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), but the acquired chemoresistance restricted the effect of its treatment. The aim of this study is to validate the miRNAs related to the Cisplatin resistance in lung cancer and elucidate the molecular mechanisms. METHODS We performed miRNA microarray and RT-PCR to obtain the ab...

A library of imidazopyrimidine-propenone conjugates (8a-8g) were synthesized and evaluated for their antitumor activity against three human cancer cell lines namely prostate (DU-145), lung (A549) and breast (MCF-7) cancer. These conjugates showed good to moderate activity against the tested cell lines. Among them two conjugates (8c and 8d) showed significant antiproliferative activity against h...