Novel compound PS-101 exhibits selective inhibition in non-small-cell lung cancer cell by blocking the EGFR-driven antiapoptotic pathway

This study investigated the anticancer effect of a novel compound PS-101 in human lung cancer cells. By phenotype screening, PS-101 exhibited highly selective inhibition in EGFR-overexpressed non-small cell lung cancer cells NCI-H460 and A549 while displaying no obvious toxicity to normal hepatic cell HL-7702, lung fibroblast cell WI-38, liver cancer cell BEL-7404 and gastric cancer cell MCG-803. A combination of cell viability assay, immunoblotting, and RNA interference revealed that PS-101 induced EGFR-dependent inhibition selectivity. Further studies showed that PS-101 caused cell cycle arrest at G1 phase, changed cell size, induced apoptosis and led to cell death by increasing the proportion of sub-G1 cells. Molecular mechanism studies suggested that blocking the EGFR-driven antiapoptotic pathway is essential for PS-101-induced apoptosis. The contribution of blocking the EGFR-driven antiapoptotic pathway was verified through examines abundance of likely candidate proteins and RNA interference. The root cause for increase in BAD and decrease in Bcl-2 which altogether initiated caspase-dependent apoptosis were predominantly due to down-regulation the expression of EGFR after PS-101 treatment. PS-101 strongly down-regulated the EGFR expression to trigger proapototic protein BAD increase and antiproapototic protein Bcl-2 decrease, which altogether actived effector caspase-3/9 to initiate cell apoptisis. Taken together, these results suggest that PS-101 may be a potential candidate for cancer therapy against human lung cancer.

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