H2-P, a honokiol derivative, exerts anti-angiogenesis effects via c-MYC signaling pathway in glioblastoma.

H2-P, a derivative of honokiol, was first synthesized in our laboratory. Compared with honokiol, H2-P has even high anti-tumor activity. In the present study, we evaluated the ability of H2-P to inhibit the survival rate in four gliomas cell lines. The result showed that H2-P could significantly inhibit proliferation of gliomas cells in a dose-dependent manner (IC50U251  = 9.03, IC50SHG-44  = 10.74, IC50U78  = 19.87, and IC50c6  = 22.56 nM). Furthermore, to determine the mechanism underlying the anti-gliomas effects of H2-P, six kinase activities was detected by Z'-LYTE™ system. The high-throughput screening shown that effect targets of H2-P were MEK and VEGFR2. We also studied the inhibition of H2-P vascular endothelial cells (EA.HY926). The data shown that H2-P could increase endothelial cells apoptosis rate, while inhibiting endothelial cell proliferation (IC50EA.hy926  = 16.11 nM) and migration. Besides, we investigated anti-angiogenesis of H2-P in the rat thoracic aorta rings, chicken chorioallantoic membrane (CAM), and capillary tube formation models. H2-P showed strong inhibition of angiogenesis. Moreover, we found that H2-P also could reduce tumor volume in mice significantly (P < 0.01), and downregulate gene expression level of VEGFR2, MEK, and c-MYC in tumor. These data suggest that H2-P have an excellent anti-tumor activity by exerting anti-angiogenesis effects via c-MYC signaling pathway in glioblastoma (GBM).