Marchantin C: a potential anti-invasion agent in glioma cells.

Cancer cell migration is a leading cause of tumor recurrence and treatment failure. Previously, we reported that marchantin C exhibited promising antitumor activity by inducing microtubule depolymerization and apoptosis. In the present study, we investigated the effect of marchantin C on inhibition of migration in T98G and U87 cells. The scratch-induced migration, Boyden chamber and cell invasion assays were applied to determine that the migrating capacity and invasiveness of these glioma cell lines were inhibited when exposed to marchantin C at a low concentration. There are no obvious signs of apoptosis with this dose. Western blot analyses confirmed that MMP-2, a key role in cancer cell migration, was reduced after incubation with marchantin C in both glioma cell lines. In addition, signaling pathway investigations demonstrated that ERK/MAPK might be involved in MMP-2 downregulation, rather than the AKT/PI3K or JAK/STAT3 pathways. Moreover, marchantin C potently suppressed angiogenesis activity in vivo by CAM assay. This is the first study to demonstrate that marchantin C can inhibit glioma cell migration and invasiveness.