Downregulation of PRMT5 by AMI-1 enhances therapeutic efficacy of compound kushen injection in lung carcinoma in vitro and in vivo

Protein arginine methyltransferase 5 (PRMT5) is overexpressed in lung carcinoma, which promotes tumor cell proliferation, survival, migration and invasion. Compound Kushen injection (CKI) is a mixture of natural compounds extracted from Kushen and Baituling, which are mainly used to stop in cancer pain and bleeding. Here we found that cell viability and colony formation were inhibited after the incubation of AMI-1. Meanwhile, AMI-1 suppressed cell migration, enhanced apoptosis, induced cell cycle arrest, inhibited PRMT5 expression and histone H3R8 and H4R3 symmetric di-methylation (H3R8me2s and H4R3me2s) accumulation, down-regulated the expression of eukaryotic translation initiation factor 4E (eIF4E) in lung carcinoma cells. Moreover, AMI-1 suppressed tumor growth, decreased H3R8me2s and H4R3me2s accumulation, down-regulated eIF4E expression and increased p53 expression in lung carcinoma xenografts of BALB/c nude mice. Of note, combined and CKI markedly enhanced the anticancer efficacy CKI in lung carcinoma. The above findings demonstrated that AMI-1 has established antineoplastic activity and this role may be associated with affecting the function of eIF4E via inhibiting PRMT5 activity or protein levels in lung carcinoma. This study highlights evidence of novel selective anticancer activity of AMI-1 in combination with CKI in lung carcinoma.