Zinc depletion efficiently inhibits pancreatic cancer cell growth by increasing the ratio of antiproliferative/proliferative genes.

We investigated the ability of the zinc chelator N,N,N',N'-tetrakis(2-pyridylmethyl)ethylenediamine (TPEN) to reduce pancreatic cancer cell viability. TPEN was much more efficient to inhibit pancreatic adenocarcinoma cell growth than a panel of anti-cancer drugs, including 5-fluorouracil, irinotecan, cisplatin, edelfosine, trichostatin A, mitomycin C, and gemcitabine, the gold standard chemotherapeutic agent for pancreatic cancer. Moreover, TPEN showed a dose- and time-dependent anti-proliferative effect significantly higher on pancreatic cancer cells than on normal primary fibroblasts. This effect may be explained by a significantly higher zinc depletion by TPEN in pancreatic cancer cells as compared to fibroblasts. Cell viability reduction by TPEN was associated to both G1-phase cell cycle arrest and apoptosis, and to the increased ratio of the expression level of cyclin-Cdk inhibitor versus cyclin genes and apoptotic versus anti-apoptotic genes. Finally, we show that apoptotic cell death induced by TPEN involved mitochondrial injury and caspase 3 and caspase 8 activation. In this study, we suggest that zinc depletion may be an efficient strategy in the treatment of pancreatic cancer because of its reduced antiproliferative effect on normal cells.