Effects of Quinacrine on Expression of Hippo signaling Pathway Components (LATS1, LATS2, and YAP) in Human Breast Cancer Stem Cells

OBJECTIVE: The Hippo signaling pathway has important role in the pathogenesis of some tumors. Breast cancer is the most prevalent cancer among females in the world. In recent years, various articles referred to inhibiting effect of quinacrine, a derivative of 9-aminoacridine, on the growth of several types of cancer cells. In this study, we evaluated the effect of quinacrine on expression of LATS1, LATS2, and YAP genes of the Hippo signaling pathway and YAP level in human breast cancer stem cells (MDA-MB 231 cell line). This cell line of breast cancer expresses the triple negative characteristics. METHODS: MDA-MB 231 cells was treated with 0.5 µM of quinacrine for 3 days. The dose was selected using MTT assays. The expression of genes was quantified by Real-time PCR. The protein expression was performed by Western blotting. Significance of observations were checked by means of Mann-Whitney test using p<0.05 as the level of significance. RESULTS: The present study demonstrated that expression of YAP gene in MDA-MB 231 cell line significantly down regulated by quinacrine. Quinacrine significantly decreased the amount of YAP protein. Moreover, quinacrine did not have meaningful effect on LATS1 and LATS2 genes expression. CONCLUSION: YAP gene is an oncogene and inhibition of its expression by quinacrine could effect on breast cancer cell progression.