Suppression of Human Fibrosarcoma Cell Metastasis by Phyllanthus emblica Extract in Vitro

Abstract

Phyllanthus emblica (PE) is known to exhibit various pharmacological properties. This study aimed to evaluatethe antimetastatic potential of a PE aqueous extract. Cytotoxicity to human fibrosarcoma cells, HT1080, wasdetermined by viability assay using the 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol,2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT)reagent. Cell migration and invasion were investigated using chemotaxis chambers containing membranes precoatedwith collagen IV and Matrigel, respectively. Cell attachment onto normal surfaces of cell culture plateswas tested to determine the cell-adhesion capability. The molecular mechanism of antimetastatic activity wasassessed by measuring the gene expression of matrix metalloproteinases, MMP2, and MMP9, using reversetranscription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assay. The mRNA levels of both genes were significantlydown-regulated after pretreatment with PE extract for 5 days. Our findings show the antimetastatic function ofPE extract in reducing cell proliferation, migration, invasion, and adhesion in both dose- and time-dependentmanners, especially growth arrest with low IC50 value. A decrease in the expression of both MMP2 and MMP9seems to be the cellular mechanism for antimetastasis in this case. There is a high potential to use PE extractsclinically as an optional adjuvant therapeutic drug for therapeutic intervention strategies in cancer therapy orchemoprevention.