Repurposing antitussive benproperine phosphate against pancreatic cancer depends on autophagy arrest.

Pancreatic cancer (PC) is one of the most common human malignancies worldwide and remains a major clinical challenge. Here, we found that benproperine phosphate (BPP), a cough suppressant, showed a significant anticancer effect on PC both in vitro and in vivo via the induction of autophagy-mediated cell death. Mechanistic studies revealed that BPP triggered AMPK/mTOR-mediated autophagy initiation and disturbed Ras-related protein Rab-11A (RAB11A)-mediated autophagosome-lysosome fusion, resulting in excessive accumulation of autophagosomes. Inhibition of autophagy or overexpression of RAB11A partially reversed BPP-induced growth inhibition in PC cells, suggesting that BPP might induce lethal autophagy arrest in PC cells. In conclusion, our results identify BPP as a potent antitumor agent for PC via the induction of autophagy arrest, therefore providing a new potential therapeutic strategy for the treatment of PC. © 2020 The Authors. Published by FEBS Press and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Citation

Huanyu Zhang, Zhe Zhang, Yonghao Huang, Siyuan Qin, Li Zhou, Ningna Weng, Jiayang Liu, Mei Yang, Xiaodian Zhang, Yanda Lu, Lin Ma, Shaojiang Zheng, Qifu Li. Repurposing antitussive benproperine phosphate against pancreatic cancer depends on autophagy arrest. Molecular oncology. 2021 Feb;15(2):725-738

PMID: 33226737

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