Probing the Antitumor Mechanism of Solanum nigrum L. Aqueous Extract against Human Breast Cancer MCF7 Cells

Binbing Ling; Shujun Xiao; Jinha Yang; Ying Wei; Meena K Sakharkar; Jian Yang

doi:10.3390/bioengineering6040112

Probing the Antitumor Mechanism of Solanum nigrum L. Aqueous Extract against Human Breast Cancer MCF7 Cells

Bioengineering (Basel). 2019 Dec 11;6(4):112. doi: 10.3390/bioengineering6040112.

Authors

Binbing Ling¹, Shujun Xiao¹, Jinha Yang¹, Ying Wei², Meena K Sakharkar¹, Jian Yang¹

Affiliations

¹ Drug Discovery and Development Research Group, College of Pharmacy and Nutrition, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK S7N 5E5, Canada.
² College of Pharmacy, Guizhou University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Guiyang, Guizhou Province 550025, China.

Abstract

Solanum nigrum L. is one of the major medicinal plants used to treat cancer. However, the functional mechanism of S. nigrum L. extract is still unknown in spite of numerous studies on its active components. In this study, we probed the potential anticancer mechanism of the aqueous extract of S. nigrum L. (AESN) towards human breast cancer cell line MCF7. At a concentration of 10 g/L, AESN caused 43% cytotoxicity, inhibited the migration, and suppressed the activities of hexokinase and pyruvate kinase by about 30% and 40%, respectively, towards the MCF7 cells. RT²-PCR analysis of a panel of 89 caner-related genes identified 13 upregulated and eight downregulated genes (>2-folds) in MCF7 cells upon AESN treatment. Gene ontology (GO) and functional disease ontology (FunDO) analyses show that the antitumor function of S. nigrum L. involves multiple genes and these genes are shared across other diseases or disorders.

Keywords: Solanum nigrum L.; breast cancer; cell migration; cytotoxicity; gene-disease association network; gene-drug interaction network; glycolysis.