Integration of Transcriptomics and Metabolomics Reveals the Antitumor Mechanism Underlying Tadalafil in Colorectal Cancer.

Journal: Frontiers in pharmacology
Published Date:

Abstract

The potential role of tadalafil, a PDE5 inhibitor, in anticancer activity and prolonged survival has been proposed. However, the systematic effects of tadalafil in colorectal cancer were not fully understood. In this study, we assessed the anti-tumor activity of tadalafil in human colorectal cancer cells. A systematic perspective of the tadalafil-induced anti-tumor mechanism was provided by the integration of transcriptomics and metabolomics. We found that differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were mainly involved in microRNAs in cancer, purine metabolism, glycosphingolipid biosynthesis, arginine biosynthesis, and amino acid metabolism. Amino acid metabolism, especially alanine, aspartate, and glutamate metabolism was the most of the differentially accumulated metabolites (DAMs) through the analysis of metabolomics. The conjoint analysis of DEGs and DAMs presented that they were also mainly involved in alanine, aspartate, and glutamate metabolism. Amino acid metabolism-related genes, , were significantly decreased after tadalafil treatment. In particular, the disturbance of alanine, aspartate, and glutamate metabolism may be the explanation for the major mechanism resulting from tadalafil anti-tumor activity.

Authors

  • Pan Zhao
    The State Key Laboratory of Cancer Biology, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, The Fourth Military Medical University, Xi'an, China.
  • Yao Shen
    Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Dongchuan Rd. 800, Shanghai, 200240 China.
  • Mengyang Li
    The Faculty of Hepatopancreatobiliary Surgery, The First Medical Center, Chinese People's Liberation Army General Hospital, Beijing, China.
  • Hanjun Dan
    The State Key Laboratory of Cancer Biology, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, The Fourth Military Medical University, Xi'an, China.
  • Zhiming Zhao
    MultiScale Networked Systems (MNS), University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 1098 XK, The Netherlands.
  • Jian Zhang
    College of Pharmacy, Ningxia Medical University, Yinchuan, NingxiaHui Autonomous Region, China.

Keywords

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