| Summary: | Huanrong Hu1,2 Zhen Dong,2–4 Xianxing Wang,2–4 Longchang Bai,2–4 Qian Lei,2–4 Jie Yang,2–4 Lin Li,2–4 Qian Li1,2, Lichao Liu1,2 Yanli Zhang,1 Yacong Ji,1 Leiyang Guo,1 Yaling Liu,1 Hongjuan Cui2–41Department of Dermatology, the Third Hospital of Hebei Medical University, Shijiazhuang 050000, People’s Republic of China; 2State Key Laboratory of Silkworm Genome Biology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, People’s Republic of China; 3Engineering Research Center for Cancer Biomedical and Translational Medicine, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, People’s Republic of China; 4Chongqing Engineering and Technology Research Center for Silk Biomaterials and Regenerative Medicine, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, People’s Republic of ChinaPurpose: Alkaloids are naturally occurring chemical compounds that are widely distributed in plants, and have pharmaceutical values and low toxicity. In recent years, some of them have been demonstrated to be promising therapeutic drug candidates for cancer treatment. Herein, we tried to explore the antitumor effect of dehydrocorydaline (DHC), a natural alkaloid isolated from Corydalis, on malignant melanoma.Methods: We treated two malignant metastatic melanoma cell lines, A375 and MV3, and a normal melanocyte cell line, PIG1, with various concentrations of DHC for set amounts of time, and detected cell proliferation, migration, and invasion by using MTT, BrdU, transwell, Western blot and soft agar assay in vitro and tumorigenicity in the xenografts in vivo.Results: Our results showed that DHC dramatically blocked cell proliferation and led to cell cycle arrest at G0/G1 phase and downregulated the expressions of cell cycle regulators CDK6 and Cyclin D1 in melanoma cells. However, DHC had little inhibitory effect on normal melanocyte cell line PIG-1. Meanwhile, DHC suppressed cell invasion and migration through modulating the epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT) markers including E-cadherin, vimentin, as well as β-catenin. In addition, DHC also significantly attenuated tumor growth in vivo. The expressions of cell cycle-related and metastasis-related proteins were further confirmed by immunohistochemical staining in the xenografts. Importantly, MEK1/2-ERK1/2 cascade was inactivated after DHC treatment and ERK activator t-butylhydroquinone (tBHQ) treatment rescued DHC-induced cell proliferation inhibition.Conclusions: Our results indicated that DHC inhibited cell proliferation and migration/invasion via inactivating MAPK signaling, and showed that DHC might be a potential novel drug to treat malignant melanoma.Keywords: dehydrocorydaline, melanoma, cell cycle, migration and invasion, MAPK
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