Natural products, explicitly medicinal plants, are an important source of inspiration of antitumor drugs, because they contain astounding amounts of small molecules that possess diversifying chemical entities. For instance, Isodon (formerly Rabdosia), a genus of the Lamiaceae (formerly Labiatae) family, has been reported as a rich source of natural diterpenes. In the current study, we evaluated the in vitro anti-proliferative property of flexicaulin A (FA), an Isodon diterpenoid with an ent-kaurane structure, in human carcinoma cells, by means of cell viability assay, flow cytometric assessment, quantitative polymerase chain reaction array, Western blotting analysis, and staining experiments. Subsequently, we validated the in vivo antitumor efficacy of FA in a xenograft mouse model of colorectal carcinoma. From our experimental results, FA appears to be a potent antitumor molecule, since it significantly attenuated the proliferation of human colorectal carcinoma cells in vitro and restricted the growth of corresponsive xenograft tumors in vivo without causing any adverse effects. Regarding its molecular mechanism, FA considerably elevated the expression level of p21 and induced cell cycle arrest in the human colorectal carcinoma cells. While executing a non-apoptotic mechanism, we believe the antitumor potential of FA opens up new horizons for the therapy of colorectal malignancy.
Keywords: cell cycle arrest; colorectal carcinoma; diterpenoid; ent-kaurane; p21.