Vulpinic Acid Targets WNT/β-Catenin Signalling Pathway in HeLa Cells

Cervical cancer is one of the most common cancers in women. Due to the side effects and inadequate treatment methods of current cancer drugs used in the treatment of cervical cancer, it is important to develop new treatment strategies. Vulpinic acid (VA), a natural lichen secondary metabolite with many remarkable biological activities, has no detailed study describing its potential anti-cancer molecular mechanism in cervical cancer HeLa cell line. We reported in our previous study that VA exhibited anti-proliferative, apoptotic, and anti-migratory properties in HeLa cells and the IC50 dose of VA in HeLa cells was calculated as 66.53 µg/mL at 48 h. The effect of VA on the WNT/β-catenin signaling pathway, which plays a role in various biological processes including tumorigenesis, cell proliferation, cell cycle regulation, embryogenesis, metastasis, cellular differentiation, apoptosis and drug resistance, is unknown. In this study, we aimed to elucidate whether VA exerts its antimigratory effect on HeLa cells treated with IC50 dose through the WNT/β-catenin signalling pathway. In summary, this study demonstrated that the suppression of migration of HeLa cells by VA may be mediated by inhibition of the WNT/β-catenin signalling pathway. VA may be a natural active compound candidate for the therapy of human cervical cancer and may be among the inhibitory candidates of the WNT/β-catenin signalling pathway.