Elucidating the pharmacological effects of Compound Kushen injection on MYC-P15-CCND1 signaling pathway in nasopharyngeal carcinoma - An in vitro study.

Ethnopharmacological Relevance: Compound Kushen injection (CKI) is a representative medication of Chinese herbal injection and is often used in the adjuvant treatment of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC), but its antitumor mechanism is poorly understood.

Aim Of The Study: To preliminarily elucidate the effects and possible mechanisms of CKI on NPC.

Methods: In this work, we explored the possible molecular mechanisms of CKI against NPC by using network pharmacology and molecular docking. In addition, proteomics was used to explore the localization and quantitative information of protein in NPC C666-1 cells after the intervention of CKI, and enrichment analysis was used to obtain the potential targets and pathways. Finally, the effect and the core targets of CKI in the intervention of NPC were explored in vitro experiments.

Results: Network pharmacology analysis identified three active components of CKI and 13 key targets. Molecular docking analysis showed that TNF, PTEN, CCND1, MAPK3, IL6, HIF1A, MYC had high affinity with corresponding components. Then the key pathway, cell cycle and the core targets MYC, CCND1, and P15 related to the key pathway were obtained. The results of in vitro experiments showed that CKI could inhibit the proliferation, migration, and invasion of NPC 5-8F cells and C666-1 cells, induce apoptosis of C666-1 cells, and arrest cell cycle G0/G1 phase. In addition, RT-qPCR and western blot showed that the expression of P15 was up-regulated and E2F4, E2F5, c-Myc, CCND1, and P107 was down-regulated in 5-8F cells and C666-1 cells intervened by CKI.

Conclusion: The key pathway, cell cycle and the corresponding core targets MYC, CCND1, and P15 were obtained from network pharmacology, molecular docking, and proteomics. CKI could inhibit the proliferation, migration, and invasion of NPC cells, induce apoptosis of C666-1 cells. Especially CKI may arrest cell cycle G0/G1 phase through regulating targets MYC/P15/CCND1 of cell cycle pathway.