Abstract
Cervical cancer is one of the most aggressive human cancers with poor prognosis due to constant chemoresistance and repeated relapse. Tubeimoside I (TBM) has been identified as a potent antitumor agent that inhibits cancer cell proliferation by triggering apoptosis and inducing cell cycle arrest. Nevertheless, the detailed mechanism remains unclear and needs to be further elucidated, especially in cervical cancer. In this study, we found that TBM could induce proliferation inhibition and cell death in cervical cancer cells both in vitro and in vivo. Further results demonstrated that treatment with TBM could induce autophagosome accumulation, which was important to TBM against cervical cancer cells. Mechanism studies showed that TBM increased autophagosome by two pathways: First, TBM could initiate autophagy by activating AMPK that would lead to stabilization of the Beclin1-Vps34 complex via dissociating Bcl-2 from Beclin1; Second, TBM could impair lysosomal cathepsin activity and block autophagic flux, leading to accumulation of impaired autophagolysosomes. In line with this, inhibition of autophagy initiation attenuated TBM-induced cell death, whereas autophagic flux inhibition could exacerbated the cytotoxic activity of TBM in cervical cancer cells. Strikingly, as a novel lethal impaired autophagolysosome inducer, TBM might enhance the therapeutic effects of chemotherapeutic drugs towards cervical cancer, such as cisplatin and paclitaxel. Together, our study provides new insights into the molecular mechanisms of TBM in the antitumor therapy, and establishes potential applications of TBM for cervical cancer treatment in clinic.