Malignant melanoma, an increasingly common form of skin cancer, poses a significant threat to public health, especially when the disease progresses past skin lesions to the stage of advanced metastasis. In this work, a new anti-tumor peptide, temporin La (T-La), was selected from a cDNA library generated from bullfrog skin. Two new derivative antitumor peptides, T-La (S) and T-La (FS), were designed by bioinformatics analysis and coupled with the RGD small molecule peptide to create chimeric RGD peptides, (RGD-T-La [S] and RGD-T-La [FS]). Preliminary experiments showed that the new antitumor peptides had significant antitumor effects. After coupling to the chimeric RGD peptide, the targeted treatment of mouse melanoma was significantly improved. Our data demonstrate that the 4 peptides tested herein significantly inhibited the proliferation, migration, and invasion of B16F10 cells; with an increase in polypeptide concentration, the proportion of melanoma cells in the G0/G1 phase decreased or increased significantly, respectively, the reactive oxygen species (ROS) content increased significantly, the mitochondrial membrane potential decreased significantly, and the expression of pro-apoptotic Bax, Caspase-3, and Caspase-9 increased, and anti-apoptotic Bcl-2 decreased significantly. Tyr and MITF genes were significantly downregulated. In conclusion, the use of these new anti-tumor peptides, when combined with a chimeric RGD peptide, may increase ROS levels and decrease mitochondrial membrane potential by inhibiting the activity of mitochondria, thus releasing apoptosis-promoting factors in B16F10 cells. The present study describes a new potential strategy for the application of promising peptides in the treatment of various cancers.
Keywords: Apoptosis; Mechanism; Melanoma; RGD chimeric peptide.
© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.