Relationship between puerarin and urothelial carcinoembryonic antigen 1 expression in apoptosis and autophagy of esophageal cancer cells

<b>Objective</b> To explore the molecular mechanism of puerarin on apoptosis and autophagy in esophageal cancer cells. <b>Methods</b> Human esophageal cancer EC109 cells were treated with puerarin at 0, 200, 500, 800 μmol/L. The cell proliferation,migration and invasion ability were measured by CCK-8 method, the scratch assay and transwell test, respectively. The expression levels of apoptosis-related proteins (pro-apoptotic proteins Bax and Bad, anti-apoptotic protein Bcl-2) and autophagy-related proteins p62, Beclin-1 and ATG5 were detected by Western blot. The expression level of urothelial carcinoembryonic antigen 1 (UCA1) was detected by real-time fluorescence quantitative polymerase chain reaction. EC109 cell lines stably overexpressing UCA1 were constructed by lentiviral transfection and divided into stable overexpressing UCA1 cells (UCA1-OE group) and negative control cells(UCA1-OENC group). The two groups of cells were treated with the same 500 μmol/L puerarin, and the expression levels of cells apoptosis and autophagy protein were detected using cellular immunofluorescence assay. <b>Results</b> Puerarin treatment with 200, 500 and 800 μmol/L significantly inhibited the proliferation, migration and invasion activities of EC109 cells ( P <0.01), promoted the expression of Bax, Bad, p62, Beclin-1 and ATG5 proteins ( P <0.01) and inhibited the expression of Bcl-2 protein ( P <0.01), all of which were concentration-dependent. Compared with 0 μmol/L (1.833±0.061), puerarin treatments of 200, 500 and 800 μmol/ L significantly inhibited the expression of UCA1 protein (the relative expression levels of UCA1 were 1.490±0.056, 1.120±0.044 and 0.783±0.015, respectively,F =274.876,P <0.01), which was also concentration-dependent. After 500 μmol/L puerarinin treatment, UCA1-OE cells overexpressing UCA1 showed lower expression levels of Bax, Bad, p62, Beclin-1 and ATG5, as well as higher expression levels of Bcl-2 compared to UCA1-OENC cells ( P <0.05). <b>Conclusion</b> Puerarin induces apoptosis and autophagy in esophageal cancer cells by inhibiting the expression of UCA1.