Dichloroacetate (DCA), a traditional mitochondria-targeting agent, has shown promising prospect as a sensitizer in fighting against malignancies including cervical cancer. But it is unclear about the effect of DCA alone on cervical tumor. Moreover, previous reports have demonstrated that the increased cyclooxygenase-2 (COX2) expression is associated with chemoresistance and poor prognosis of cervical cancer. However, it is still unknown whether COX2 can affect the sensitivity of DCA in cervical cancer cells. In this study, we found that cervical cancer cells were insensitive to DCA. Furthermore, we for the first time revealed that DCA could upregulate COX2 which impeded the chemosensitivity of DCA in cervical cancer cells. Mechanistic study showed that DCA reduced the level of RNA binding protein quaking (QKI), leading to the decay suppression of COX2 mRNA and the subsequent elevation of COX2 protein. Inhibition of COX2 using celecoxib could sensitize DCA in repressing the growth of cervical cancer cells both in vitro and in vivo. These results indicate that COX2 is a novel resistance factor of DCA, and combination of celecoxib with DCA may be beneficial to the treatment of cervical cancer.

Both dichloroacetate (DCA) and metformin (Met) have shown promising antitumor efficacy by regulating cancer cell metabolism. However, the DCA-mediated protective autophagy and Met-induced lactate accumulation limit their tumor-killing potential respectively. So overcoming the corresponding shortages will improve their therapeutic effects. In the present study, we found that DCA and Met synergistically inhibited the growth and enhanced the apoptosis of ovarian cancer cells. Interestingly, we for the first time revealed that Met sensitized DCA via dramatically attenuating DCA-induced Mcl-1 protein and protective autophagy, while DCA sensitized Met through markedly alleviating Met-induced excessive lactate accumulation and glucose consumption. The in vivo experiments in nude mice also showed that DCA and Met synergistically suppressed the growth of xenograft ovarian tumors. These results may pave a way for developing novel strategies for the treatment of ovarian cancer based on the combined use of DCA and Met.

Dexamethasone (Dex) has been commonly used in lymphoma and leukemia treatment, but the detailed mechanisms are not fully understood. Suppressor of AP-1 regulated by interferon (SARI) has tumor-selective growth inhibitory effect. However, it's unclear whether SARI is involved in the Dex-mediated lymphoma growth suppression. In this study, we found that Dex-treated B lymphoma tissues had a higher level of SARI. Dex repressed the growth of B lymphoma cells and upregulated SARI expression by activating glucocorticoid receptor (GR) in vitro and in vivo. Silencing of SARI attenuated the Dex-mediated growth suppression of B lymphoma cells and inhibition of AP-1 activity. Reporter assays revealed that activation of GR enhanced the transcriptional activity of SARI promoter. EMSA and ChIP assays showed that GR directly bound to the ER9 element in SARI promoter region. These results for the first time demonstrated that SARI is a novel target gene of GR, and the upregulation of SARI plays an important role in Dex's killing effect on B lymphoma cells, suggesting that SARI may serve as a novel target and a potential indicator of Dex sensitivity in B lymphoma treatment.