Elaeagnus angustifolia Plant Extract Inhibits Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition and Induces Apoptosis via HER2 Inactivation and JNK Pathway in HER2-Positive Breast Cancer Cells

Abstract

Elaeagnus angustifolia (EA) is a medicinal plant used for treating several human diseases in the Middle East. Meanwhile, the outcome of extract on HER2-positive breast cancer remains nascent. Thus, we herein investigated the effects of the aqueous extract obtained from the flowers of on two HER2-positive breast cancer cell lines, SKBR3 and ZR75-1. Our data revealed that extract inhibits cell proliferation and deregulates cell-cycle progression of these two cancer cell lines. extract also prevents the progression of epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT), an important event for cancer invasion and metastasis; this is accompanied by upregulations of E-cadherin and β-catenin, in addition to downregulations of vimentin and fascin, which are major markers of EMT. Thus, extract causes a drastic decrease in cell invasion ability of SKBR3 and ZR75-1 cancer cells. Additionally, we found that extract inhibits colony formation of both cell lines in comparison with their matched control. The molecular pathway analysis of HER2 and JNK1/2/3 of extract exposed cells revealed that it can block HER2 and JNK1/2/3 activities, which could be the major molecular pathway behind these events. Our findings implicate that extract may possess chemo-preventive effects against HER2-positive breast cancer via HER2 inactivation and specifically JNK1/2/3 signaling pathways.