An investigation into the effects of 6-Gingerol on glucose and glutamine metabolism in breast cancer cell lines

Abstract

Abstract Background One of the most significant signs of cancer is reprogramming of energy metabolism, especially enhancement of glycolysis and glutaminolysis to support the speedy growth of tumor cells.Purpose As [6]-gingerol may play a beneficial role in cancer cells metabolism, in this study, we investigated whether the [6]‐gingerol would be able to induce changes catalytic activities of lactate dehydrogenase A (LDHA) and glutamate dehydrogenase (GDH) in MCF-7 and SKBR3 breast cancer cells. We also wanted to test whether the glutamic acid transporters like SLC1A5 (ASCT2) and SLC7A5 (LAT1) are targets of [6]‐gingerol to block glutamine import into cancer cells.Methods and results Our results showed for the first time that [6]‐gingerol resulted in reduced LDHA and GDH enzyme activities. Our data also revealed a significant down-regulation of GDH, LDHA, SLC7A5, SLC1A5 gene expression after treatment of MCF-7 and SKBR3 cells with [6]-gingerol.Conclusion These findings indicated that [6]‐gingerol acts as metabolic antagonist for breast cancer cells, and any reduction in cell growth was associated with reduced LDHA, GDH enzymes activities and down-regulation of SLC1A5 and SLC7A5 gene expression, so this suggests that [6]‐gingerol has the potential to block certain glutamine transporters and deprive the tumor cells of these important tumor promoting amino acids. Therefore, [6]‐gingerol can antagonize the development of breast cancer cells via inhibition of aerobic glycolysis and glutaminolysis .