Xihuang Pill (西黄丸) induces mesenchymal-epithelial transition and inhibits loss of apical-basal polarity in colorectal cancer cell through regulating ZEB1-SCRIB Loop

Objective To investigate the antiproliferative and anti-metastasis effect of Xihuang Pill (西黄丸, XP) on human colorectal cancer cell and to explore the molecular mechanism by which it produces the effects. Methods Highly metastatic human colorectal cancer cell line LoVo was treated with low-, medium-, and highdose XP-containing serum (XP-L, XP-M, XP-H) groups for 48 h, cells intervened with no drug rat serum and PD98059 [extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) inhibitor] as negative and positive controls (NC and PC) groups. Cell proliferation assay was made using cell counting kit-8 (CCK8). The 8 μm pore-size transwell chamber and 4′, 6-diamidino-2-phenylindole (DAPI) staining were applied to examine the ability of invasion and migration of the cells. The protein expression of ERK1/2, zinc fifi nger E-box-binding homeobox 1 (ZEB1), Scrib and lethal giant larvae homolog 2 (Lgl2) was detected by Western blotting while the relative mRNA quantity of E-cadherin, N-cadherin, Occludin and junctional adhesion molecule-1 (JAM1) was measured by realtime fluorescent quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR). Results XP induced a dose-dependent suppression on the proliferation of LoVo cells ( P