Curcumin regulates signal transducer and activator of transcription (STAT) expression in K562 cells.

Signal transducers and activators of transcription (STATs) play important roles in numerous cellular events as for example differentiation, inflammation or immune response. Furthermore, constitutive STAT activation can be observed in a high number of tumors. In our hands, curcumin treatment induced a decrease of nuclear STAT3, -5a and -5b, without affecting neither STAT1, nor the phosphorylation state of STAT1, -3 or -5 in the K562 cell line. Most interestingly, the decrease of nuclear STAT5a and -5b after curcumin treatment was accompanied by an increase of truncated STAT5 isoforms, indicating that curcumin is able to induce the cleavage of STAT5 into its dominant negative variants lacking the STAT5 C-terminal region. Interferon (IFN)-beta and -gamma treatment induced IFN-stimulated responsive element (ISRE) transcriptional activity, which was efficiently inhibited by curcumin pre-treatment. In parallel, IFN-gamma treatment induced an increase of the amount of nuclear STAT1 and -3, as well as their phosphorylated isoforms. Again, curcumin pre-treatment inhibited these increases. Finally, curcumin treatment inhibited Jak2 mRNA expression as well as cyclin D1 and v-src gene expression in K562 chronic leukaemia cells.