Abstract
Tetracenomycin X (Tcm X) has been reported to have antitumour activity in various cancers, but there have not been any studies on its activity with respect to lung cancer to date. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the anti-lung cancer activity of Tcm X. In this study, we found that tetracenomycin X showed antitumour activity in vivo and selectively inhibited the proliferation of lung cancer cells without influencing lung fibroblasts. In addition, apoptosis and autophagy did not contribute to the antitumour activity. Tetracenomycin X exerts antitumour activity through cell cycle arrest induced by the downregulation of cyclin D1. To explore the specific mechanism, we found that tetracenomycin X directly induced cyclin D1 proteasomal degradation and indirectly downregulated cyclin D1 via the activation of p38 and c-JUN proteins. All these findings were explored for the first time, which indicated that tetracenomycin X may be a powerful antimitotic class of anticancer drug candidates for the treatment of lung cancer in the future.