Abstract

Background: Acquired resistance to various drugs is an obstacle to anticancer therapy. Doxorubicin (Dox) is the first-line chemo-drug for therapy of various malignant tumors but it fails when treatment of multi-drug resistant tumors. One of the main factors of Dox-resistance is overexpression of drug resistance genes, particularly, P-glycoprotein – Pgp. Earlier we’ve revealed a high selective apoptosis of tumor cells, induced by some cationic peptides (CPs) in vitro through inactivation their cell targets – chaperone proteins nucleolin/NCL and nucleophosmin/NPM. This paper describes effect of CPs on breast cancer (BC) cell lines HBL 100 and doxorubicin-resistant cell line HBL-100/Dox.

Objective: Is to examine the viability of BC and Dox-resistant BC cells after incubation with some CPs.

Results: Some Arg/Lys-enriched cationic peptides under study induce cell death by nucleolar stress mechanisms both in HBL 100 BC cell line and HBL 100/ID 120 one. So, this CPs is perspective agents for inducing apoptosis of BC cells and overcoming Dox resistance. 

Keywords

breast cancer lines, doxorubicin resistance, nucleolin expression, cationic peptides, apoptosis induction, oncoproteins, therapeutic agents, metformin, molecular transport, antibody-related agents, tumor cells, breast cancer, growth media, peptide water solution, goat antiserum, nucleolar stress initiation, hydrogen bounds