Inducing apoptosis and enhancing chemosensitivity to Gemcitabine via RNA interference targeting Mcl-1 gene in pancreatic carcinoma cell

Purpose Resistance to chemotherapy is a major cause of treatment failure and poor prognosis in pancreatic carcinoma. Myeloid cell leukemia-1 (Mcl-1) is highly up-regulated in pancreatic carcinoma and is associated with the anti-apoptosis and the resistance to chemotherapy drugs. Suppression of Mcl-1 would be an approach to induce apoptosis and enhance the chemosensitivity. Methods In this study, three pancreatic cancer cell lines (PANC-1, BxPC-3 and SW1900) stably expressing shRNAs targeting Mcl - 1 gene were established and gene expression inhibition was assessed by Real-Time QPCR and Western blotting. The effects of Mcl-1 downregulation mediated by RNAi were explored in vitro and in vivo. Results We showed that the specific downregulation of Mcl-1 strikingly inhibited cell growth, colony formation, cell cycle arrest and induced apoptosis in pancreatic cancer cells in vitro, and markedly decreased the tumorigenicity in a mouse xenograft model. Moreover, knockdown of Mcl-1 significantly increased the chemosensitivity to Gemcitabine in pancreatic carcinoma cells. Conclusions Our data suggests that the specific downregulation of Mcl-1 by RNAi is a promising approach to induce apoptosis and enhance the chemosensitivity for pancreatic carcinoma gene therapy.