Cyclosporine A Suppresses the Malignant Progression of Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma in vitro.

BACKGROUND: The Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma (OSCC) is one of the most frequent cancer types. Failure of treatment of OSCC is potentially lethal because of local recurrence, regional lymph node metastasis, and distant metastasis. Chemotherapy plays a vital role through suppression of tumorigenesis. Cyclosporine A (CsA), an immunosuppressant drug, has been efficiently used in allograft organ transplant recipients to prevent rejection, and also has been used in a subset of patients with autoimmunity related disorders. The present study aims to investigate novel and effective chemotherapeutic drugs to overcome drug-resistance in the treatment of OSCC. METHODS: Cells were incubated in the standard way. Cell viability was assayed using the MTT assay. Cell proliferation was determined using colony formation assay. The cell cycle assay was performed using flow cytometry. Apoptosis was assessed using fluorescence-activated cell sorting after stained by the Annexin V-fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC). Cell migration and invasion were analyzed using wound healing assay and tranwell. The effect of COX-2, c-Myc, MMP-9, MMP-2, and NFATc1 protein expression was determined using Western blot analysis while NFATc1 mRNA expression was determined by RT-PCR. RESULTS: In vitro studies indicated that CsA inhibited partial OSCC growth by inducing cell cycle arrest, apoptosis, and the migration and invasion of OSCC cells. We also demonstrated that CsA could inhibit the expression of NFATc1 and its downstream genes COX-2, c-Myc, MMP-9, and MMP-2 in OSCC cells. Furthermore, we analyzed the expression of NFATc1 in head and neck cancer through the Oncomine database. The data was consistent with the experimental findings. CONCLUSION: The present study initially demonstrated that CsA could inhibit the progression of OSCC cells and can mediate the signal molecules of NFATc1 signaling pathway, which has strong relationship with cancer development. That explains us CsA has potential to explore the possibilities as a novel chemotherapeutic drug for the treatment of OSCC.

Application of silver ion in the separation of macrolide antibiotic components by high-speed counter-current chromatography.

Three macrolide antibiotic components - ascomycin, tacrolimus and dihydrotacrolimus - were separated and purified by silver ion high-speed counter-current chromatography (HSCCC). The solvent system consisted of n-hexane-tert-butyl methyl ether-methanol-water (1:3:6:5, v/v) and silver nitrate (0.10mol/l). The silver ion acted as a pi-complexing agent with tacrolimus because of its extra side double bond compared with ascomycin and dihydrotacrolimus. This complexation modified the partition coefficient values and the separation factors of the three components. As a result, ascomycin, tacrolimus and dihydrotacrolimus were purified from 150mg extracted crude sample with purities of 97.6%, 98.7% and 96.5%, respectively, and yields over 80% (including their tautomers). These results cannot be achieved with the same solvent system but without the addition of silver ion.