Intratumoral injection of taxol in vivo suppresses A549 tumor showing cytoplasmic vacuolization.

Based on our recent in vitro studies, this report was designed to explore the mechanism by which high concentration of taxol (70 µM) induced paraptosis-like cell death in human lung carcinoma (A549) cells, and to evaluate the therapeutic efficacy of taxol using A549 tumor-bearing mice in vivo. Exposure of cells to taxol induced time-dependent cytotoxicity and cytoplasmic vacuolization without the involvement of Bax, Bak, Mcl-1, Bcl-XL, and caspase-3. Although taxol treatment induced activating transcription factor 6 (ATF6) cleavage indicative of endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress, silencing ATF6 by shATF6 did not prevent taxol-induced both cytotoxcity and cytoplasmic vacuolization, suggesting that taxol-induced cytoplasmic vacuolization and cell death were not due to ER stress. Moreover, taxol-treated cells did not show DNA fragmentation and loss of mitochondrial membrane potential, the typical characteristics of apoptosis. In addition, taxol-induced cytoplasmic vacuolization did not show the cellular lysis, the characteristics of oncosis, and positive of β-galactosidase, the characteristic of senescence, indicating that taxol induced paraptosis-like cell death is neither oncosis nor senescence. Moreover, our in vivo data showed that intratumoral injection of taxol (50 mg/kg) in A549 tumor xenograft mice on day 1 and day 19 potently suppressed tumor growth showing significant ER vacuolization without toxicity. In conclusion, high concentration of taxol exhibits a significant anticancer activity by inducing paraptosis-like cell death in vitro and in vivo, without significant toxicity, suggesting a promising therapeutic strategy for apoptosis-resistance cancer by inducing ER vacuolization.