Here, the anticancer effects of oxaliplatin combined with piperlongumine (PL), a molecule promoting reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation, in colorectal cancer, were assessed.
ROS generation assay, flow cytometry, and western blot analysis provided supporting evidence that the hexane and chloroform fractions induced cell death in HCT116 and B16-F10 cell lines.
Moreover, several of the ROS1 fusion proteins are implicated in the pathogenesis of a very small proportion of other cancers including glioblastoma, angiosarcoma, and cholangiocarcinoma as well as ovarian, gastric, and colorectal carcinomas.
ROS1 is a receptor tyrosine kinase that has recently been shown to undergo gene rearrangements in~1%-2% of non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC) and in a variety of other tumours including cholangiocarcinoma, gastric carcinoma, colorectal carcinoma and in spitzoid neoplasms, glioblastoma and inflammatory myofibroblastic tumours.
These results demonstrated that curcumin could enhance the effects of irinotecan on CRC cells by inhibiting cell viability and inducing cell cycle arrest and apoptosis, and that these effects may be mediated, in part, by ROS generation and activation of the ER stress pathway.
Despite the additional oncogenic events and tumor heterogeneity observed, elucidation of the first cases of ROS1 rearrangements and confirmation of ALK rearrangements support further evaluation of these genomic fusions as potential therapeutic targets in colorectal cancer.
ROS1 is a receptor tyrosine kinase that has recently been shown to undergo genetic rearrangements in a variety of human cancers, including glioblastoma, non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), cholangiocarcinoma, ovarian cancer, gastric adenocarcinoma, colorectal cancer, inflammatory myofibroblastic tumor, angiosarcoma, and epithelioid hemangioendothelioma.