Noscapine and Apoptosis in Breast and Other Cancers.

Breast cancer is the second leading contributor to the age-standardized mortality rate, for both sexes and all ages worldwide. In Europe and the United States, it is the second leading cause of mortality, with an incidence rate of about 2.6 million cases per year. Noscapine, a well-known alkaloid used as a cough suppressant, demonstrated anti-tumor effects by triggering apoptosis in various cancer cell lines and has the potential to become another ally against breast, ovarian, colon, and gastric cancer, among other types of malignancy. Apoptosis plays a crucial role in the treatment of cancer. Noscapine affected BAX, CASP8, CASP9, NFKBIA, and RELA gene and protein expression in the MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231 cell lines. Gene expression was higher in tumor than in normal tissue, including the BAX expression levels in lung, ovary, endometrium, colon, stomach, and glioblastoma patients; BCL2L1 expression in endometrium, colon, and stomach patients; CASP8 gene expression levels in lung, endometrium, colon, stomach, and glioblastoma patients; RELA in colon, stomach, and glioblastoma patients; and NFKBIA in glioblastoma patients. It can be concluded that noscapine affected genes and proteins related to apoptosis in cancer cell lines and several types of cancer patients.

Apoptotic effect of noscapine in breast cancer cell lines.

Cancer is a public health problem in the world and breast cancer is the most frequently cancer in women. Approximately 15% of the breast cancers are triple-negative. Apoptosis regulates normal growth, homeostasis, development, embryogenesis and appropriate strategy to treat cancer. Bax is a protein pro-apoptotic enhancer of apoptosis in contrast to Bcl-2 with antiapoptotic properties. Initiator caspase-9 and caspase-8 are features of intrinsic and extrinsic apoptosis pathway, respectively. NF-κB is a transcription factor known to be involved in the initiation and progression of breast cancer. Noscapine, an alkaloid derived from opium is used as antitussive and showed antitumor properties that induced apoptosis in cancer cell lines. The aim of the present study was to determine the apoptotic effect of noscapine in breast cancer cell lines compared to breast normal cell line. Three cell lines were used: i) a control breast cell line MCF-10F; ii) a luminal-like adenocarcinoma triple-positive breast cell line MCF-7; iii) breast cancer triple-negative cell line MDA-MB-231. Our results showed that noscapine had lower toxicity in normal cells and was an effective anticancer agent that induced apoptosis in breast cancer cells because it increases Bax gene and protein expression in three cell lines, while decreases Bcl-xL gene expression, and Bcl-2 protein expression decreased in breast cancer cell lines. Therefore, Bax/Bcl-2 ratio increased in the three cell lines. This drug increased caspase-9 gene expression in breast cancer cell lines and caspase-8 gene expression increased in MCF-10F and MDA-MB-231. Furthermore, it increased cleavage of caspase-8, suggesting that noscapine-induced apoptosis is probably due to the involvement of extrinsic and intrinsic apoptosis pathways. Antiapoptotic gene and protein expression diminished and proapoptotic gene and protein expression increased noscapine-induced expression, probably due to decrease in NF-κB gene and protein expression and also by increase of IκBα gene expression induced by this drug.