Insulin and novel thioglycosides exert suppressive effect on human breast and colon carcinoma cells

// Siddarth Agrawal 1 , Marta Wozniak 1 , Mateusz Luc 1 , Kinga Walaszek 1 , Ewa Pielka 1 , Wieslaw Szeja 2 , Gabriela Pastuch-Gawolek 2, 3 , Andrzej Gamian 4 and Piotr Ziolkowski 1 1 Department of Pathology, Wroclaw Medical University, Wroclaw, Poland 2 Department of Organic Chemistry, Bioorganic Chemistry and Biotechnology, Silesian University of Technology, Gliwice, Poland 3 Biotechnology Centre, Silesian University of Technology, Gliwice, Poland 4 Department of Biochemistry, Wroclaw Medical University, Wroclaw, Poland Correspondence to: Siddarth Agrawal, email: siddarth@agrawal.pl Keywords: cancer therapy; thioglycosides; insulin; breast cancer; colon cancer Received: September 05, 2017      Accepted: November 16, 2017      Published: December 11, 2017 ABSTRACT The rationale for the implementation of novel therapies should be based on hallmarks of cancer. Two novel compounds labelled as thioglycoside A and B were designed and evaluated on breast and colon cancer cell lines. We assessed their cytotoxic effect after sensitizing cancer cells with insulin. In order to explore the underlying mechanisms, we performed tests to assess cell migration and motility, apoptosis, expression of glucose transporter 1 and proapoptotic proteins. Both compounds proved to have an antitumor effect which was significantly enhanced in combination with insulin. Linking glucose and anticancer agent presents an approach that exploits the Warburg effect. Targeting dysfunctional glycometabolism and increased glucose absorption is emerging as a promising anticancer strategy.