Synergistic Effects of Targeting Survivin and CDK1 on Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma in Vitro and in Vivo

Background: To explore the impact of pU6-based tandem survivinand CDK1-specific short hairpin RNA on the biological behaviors of CNE-2 nasopharyngealcarcinoma cells in vitro and in vivo. Patients and Methods: Thevectors of pU6-survivinshRNA, pU6-CDK1shRNA and were constructed andtransfected into CNE-2 cells with Lipofectamine TM 2000, respectively. ThemRNAs and proteins of CDK1 and survivin were determined by RT-PCR and Westernblotting, accordingly. MTT assay was employed to evaluate the proliferation ofCNE-2 cells, and flow cytometry was performed to determine the apoptosis of CNE-2 cells.The effects of interfering survivin and CDK1 on tumorigenesis were evaluated bytumor xenografts experiments. Results: Effective plasmids weresuccessfully constructed knocking down survivin and/or CDK1. The proliferationinhibition of CNE-2 cells by pU6-survivinshRNA-CDK1shRNA (32.5%)was higher than that of by pU6-survivinshRNA (25.6%) and pU6-CDK1shRNA (15.6%), and apoptosis in CNE-2cells simultaneously interfering survivin and CDK1 (15.2%) dramaticallyincreased when compared to those of interfering survivin (5.4%) or CDK1 (4.7%)alone. Furthermore, simultaneously interfering survivin and CDK1 is moreeffective than interfering alone component in inhibiting tumorgrowth of fBalb/C nude mice xenografted with CNE-2 cells. Conclusion: The results altogether indicate that interfering survivin andCDK1simutaneously can produce synergistic effects of anti-nasopharyngeal carcinoma,which could be a potential therapeutic method.