Abstract
The present study addressed whether the combination of metformin and ionizing radiation (IR) would show enhanced antitumor effects in radioresistant p53-deficient colorectal cancer cells, focusing on repair pathways for IR-induced DNA damage. Metformin caused a higher reduction in clonogenic survival as well as greater radiosensitization and inhibition of tumor growth of p53-/-than of p53+/+ colorectal cancer cells and xenografts. Metformin combined with IR induced accumulation of tumor cells in the G2/M phase and delayed the repair of IR-induced DNA damage. In addition, this combination significantly decreased levels of p53-related homologous recombination (HR) repair compared with IR alone, especially in p53-/- colorectal cancer cells and tumors. In conclusion, metformin enhanced radiosensitivity by inducing G2/M arrest and reducing the expression of DNA repair proteins even in radioresistant HCT116 p53-/- colorectal cancer cells and tumors. Our study provides a scientific rationale for the clinical use of metformin as a radiosensitizer in patients with p53-deficient colorectal tumors, which are often resistant to radiotherapy.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | e0143596 |
| Journal | PLoS ONE |
| Volume | 10 |
| Issue number | 11 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 1 Nov 2015 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The work was supported by the following: 1. MSK: grant (50541-2014) from the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, Republic of Korea (http://www.msip.go.kr); and 2. HH: National Research Foundation grants (2012R1A2A1A0300692) funded by Korean Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology. (http://www.nrf.re.kr).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Jeong et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.