β-catenin knockdown enhances the effects of fluorouracil in the breast cancer cell line MDA-MB-468.

Tumor proliferation, drug resistance and cell stemness are major difficulties that are encountered during breast cancer therapy and are often responsible for disease progression and cancer-related mortality. β-catenin is considered to be an invasion gene in breast cancer. However, how β-catenin regulates breast cancer cell proliferation and stemness remains unclear. In the present study, β-catenin knockdown by small interfering RNA in MDA-MB-468, a highly metastatic breast cancer cell line, inhibited the expression of β-catenin, Oct3/4 (stemness), survivin (anti-apoptosis) and BCRP (drug resistance). Knockdown of β-catenin enhanced the effects of fluorouracil (5-FU) chemotherapy on the proliferation of MDA-MB-468 cells. Thus, these preliminary results indicate that β-catenin knockdown enhanced 5-FU-induced proliferation inhibition in the breast cancer cell line MDA-MB-468, and indicate that combining 5-FU with gene silencing could be an advantageous option for enhancing the curative effect of chemotherapy in breast cancer and other malignancies.