Metabolic regulation of cancer cell growth via AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) activation is a widely studied strategy for cancer treatment, including leukemias. Recent notions that naturally occurring compounds might have AMPK activity led to the search for nutraceuticals with potential AMPK-stimulating activity. We found that hydroxycitric acid (HCA), a natural, safe bioactive from the plant Garcinia gummi-gutta (cambogia), has potent AMPK activity in chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) cell line K562. HCA is a known competitive inhibitor of ATP citrate lyase (ACLY) and is widely used as a weight loss inducer. We found that HCA was able to inhibit the growth of K562 cells in in vitro and in vivo xenograft models. At the mechanistic level, we identified a direct interaction between AMPK and ACLY that seems to be sensitive to HCA treatment. Additionally, HCA treatment resulted in the co-activation of AMPK and the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathways. Moreover, we found an enhanced unfolded protein response as observed by activation of the eIF2α/ATF4 pathway that could explain the induction of cell cycle arrest at the G2/M phase and DNA fragmentation upon HCA treatment in K562 cells. Overall, these findings suggest HCA as a nutraceutical approach for the treatment of CMLs.
Keywords: AMPK; CML; hydroxycitric acid; nutraceuticals.