Osthole inhibits cell proliferation by regulating the TGF-β1/Smad/p38 signaling pathways in pulmonary arterial smooth muscle cells.

Pulmonary artery smooth muscle cell (PASMC) proliferation contributes to pulmonary vascular remodeling, which ultimately leads to pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). Osthole has been previously shown to inhibit tumor cell growth. Our previous experiments demonstrated that osthole could prevent monocrotaline-induced PAH and pulmonary artery remodeling in rats and that its effects might be associated with inhibiting PASMC proliferation. However, the exact mechanism remains unclear. In this study, we observed the inhibitory effect of osthole on platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF)-BB-induced rat PASMC growth, cell cycle progression and proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) expression, as measured by CCK-8 assay, flow cytometric analysis and western blotting, respectively. We also detected the expression and activities of the cell cycle regulators cyclin D1/CDK4, cyclin E1/CDK2, p53, p27 and p21 and the TGF-β1/Smad/p38 signaling pathways in rat PASMCs by western blotting. Our results show that osthole effectively suppressed PDGF-BB-stimulated proliferation, PCNA protein expression, and cell cycle progression in rat PASMCs in vitro. We further demonstrated that treatment with osthole significantly induced cell cycle arrest at the G0/G1 phase in PASMCs, which was supported by the finding that osthole significantly decreased cyclin D1/CDK4 and cyclin E1/CDK2 protein levels and increased p53, p27 and p21 protein levels. These effects may partly be attributed to the downregulation of TGF-β1/Smad/p38 signaling pathway activation. Our findings suggest that osthole is a potential therapeutic candidate that warrants further investigation regarding its potential use for the treatment of PAH.