Combinatorial Antitumor Effect of Rapamycin and β-Elemene in Follicular Thyroid Cancer Cells

الملخص EN

Background.

mTOR signaling would be a promising target for thyroid cancer therapy.

However, in clinical trials, objective response rate with mTOR inhibitor monotherapy in most cancer types was modest.

A new focus on development of combinatorial strategies with rapalogs is increasing.

Objective.

Investigating the combinatorial antitumor effect of rapamycin and β-elemene in follicular thyroid cancer cells.

Methods.

MTT assay was used to determine the FTC-133 cell proliferation after culturing with rapamycin and/or β-elemene.

To analyze their combinatorial effect, immunoblotting was performed to analyze the activation status of AKT.

Moreover, β-elemene attenuated rapamycin-induced immunosuppression was tested in mice.

Results.

Combination of rapamycin and β-elemene exerted significant synergistic antiproliferative effects in FTC-133 cell lines in vitro, based on inhibiting the AKT feedback activation induced by rapamycin.

In vivo, the β-elemene could attenuate rapamycin-induced immunosuppression via reversing imbalance of Treg/Th17, with the underlying mechanism needed to be declared.

Conclusions.

We demonstrate that the novel combination of mTOR inhibitor with β-elemene synergistically attenuates tumor cell growth in follicular thyroid cancer, which requires additional preclinical validation.