Repurposed benzydamine targeting CDK2 suppresses the growth of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma

Abstract

Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is one of the leading causes of cancer death worldwide. It is urgent to develop new drugs to improve the prognosis of ESCC patients. Here, we found benzydamine, a locally acting non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug, had potent cytotoxic effect on ESCC cells. Benzydamine could suppress ESCC proliferation in vivo and in vitro. In terms of mechanism, CDK2 was identified as a target of benzydamine by molecular docking, pull-down assay and in vitro kinase assay. Specifically, benzydamine inhibited the growth of ESCC cells by inhibiting CDK2 activity and affecting downstream phosphorylation of MCM2, c-Myc and Rb, resulting in cell cycle arrest. Our study illustrates that benzydamine inhibits the growth of ESCC cells by downregulating the CDK2 pathway.

Keywords

benzydamine / cyclin-dependent kinase 2 / patient-derived xenograft / esophageal squamous cell carcinoma

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundations of China (No. 81872335), the National Natural Science Youth Foundation (No. 81902486), the Natural Science Foundation of Henan (No. 161100510300), the Central Plains Science and Technology Innovation Leading Talents (No. 224200510015), the Science and Technology Project of Henan Province (No. 212102310187).

Electronic Supplementary Material

Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at https://doi.org/10.1007/s11684-022-0956-8 and is accessible for authorized users.

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Yubing Zhou, Xinyu He, Yanan Jiang, Zitong Wang, Yin Yu, Wenjie Wu, Chenyang Zhang, Jincheng Li, Yaping Guo, Xinhuan Chen, Zhicai Liu, Jimin Zhao, Kangdong Liu and Zigang Dong declare no competing interests. This study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of Zhengzhou University. Written informed consent was provided by all patients for the use of the tissue samples.

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