(1.School of Chemistry and Life Sciences， Hubei University of Education， Wuhan 430205， China；2.Hubei Key Laboratory of Purification and Application of Plant Anticancer Active Ingredients， School of Chemistry and Life Sciences， Hubei University of Education， Wuhan 430205， China；3.College of Life Science， Central China Normal University， Wuhan 430079， China)
Abstract：In order to explore the inhibitory effect of isobutyl isothiocyanate on the growth of primary hepatocellular carcinoma cell line HepG2 and related molecular mechanism， the growth inhibition rate of the compound on the cells was detected by the MTT assays with the IC50 value of 3.5 μg·mL-1. Through flow cytometry assay， it was found that isobutyl isothiocyanate induced cellular apoptosis at concentrations above 0.437 μg·mL-1. Moreover， scratch test showed that isobutyl isothiocyanate inhibited cell migration at concentrations above 0.875 μg·mL-1. Further bioinformatics analysis showed that the target protein of this compound might be macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF). And the expression level of MIF in HepG2 cells was higher than that in low-susceptibility strains. Western blot assays suggested that isobutyl isothiocyanate was able to not only inhibit Janus kinases/just another kinases 2/signal transducers and activators of transcription 3 (JAK2/STAT3) signaling， but also down-regulate the expression of p53 protein. These data indicated that isobutyl isothiocyanate might target the MIF of HepG2 cells to inhibit the interaction between MIF and CD74， down-regulating p53， thereby blocking the normal cell cycle and inducing cell apoptosis， suggesting it to be a potential suppressor to liver cancer.
2022, Vol. 56 
