Abstract
Although the majority of the population will be protected due to the advent and widespread use of the HPV vaccine, the treatment of cervical cancer for all causes, including HPV-negative cervical cancer, is still worthy of further research. The focal point of this study was Canadine's inhibition of epithelial-mesenchymal transformation (EMT) in cervical cancer. Immunoblotting, wound healing and tumor invasion experiments showed that low concentration of Canadine could inhibit the EMT process, proliferation and migration of HT-3 cells (HPV-negative cell line). Combined with GEO database, it was found that the expression levels of several genes highly expressed in cervical tumor tissues could be inhibited by Canadine, especially MAGEA3. Further experiments confirmed that the inhibition of Canadine on MAGEA3 protein increased with time. The small interference and overexpression plasmid of MAGEA3 were designed and verified. In HT-3 cells, when MAGEA3 levels were directly decreased, mesenchymal phenotypic markers were decreased and epithelial phenotypic markers were increased. The opposite result was obtained by overexpression of MAGEA3. In addition, the inhibition of EMT due to the reduction of endogenous MAGEA3 by Canadine was also offset by the overexpression of exogenous MAGEA3. The study concludes that Canadine inhibits EMT of cervical cancer by inhibiting MAGEA3.