The Anticancer Mechanism of an Approved Disease Modifying Herb Medicine:Total Glucosides of Paeony Target both EGFR and HER-2 in Lung Cancer Cell Lines

The high cost and slow pace of the pharmaceutical industry in bringing novel anti-cancer drugs for waiting patients indicates that the current business model for drug development needs innovation. We assumed that studying anticancer activities from approved disease modifying medicines might provide a possible way to lower the cost and speed up anti-cancer drug development. To test the idea, we studied the molecular mechanisms of anticancer effect of Total Glucosides of Paeony (TGP), a Chinese State Food and Drug Administration approved drug, in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) cell-based systems. NSCLC is the leading cause of death from all cancers. Epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) is a major and effective molecular target of anti-NSCLC therapy because EGFR is over-expressed in 50-80 percent of NSCLC. We discovered that TGP inhibited phosphorylation of two most prominent members of EGFR family, EGFR and HER-2, in addition to suppressing EGFR and HER-2 expression in lung cancer cell lines tested. Subsequently, TGP showed expected anti-cellular proliferation, pro-apoptosis, and cell cycle arrest properties of EGFR inhibition in the cancer cell lines tested. Therefore, searching anti-EGFR and HER-2 activities among approved medicines might be a reasonable approach for novel anti-NSCLC drug discovery.