摘要

A major issue in the treatment of leukemia is resistance to chemotherapeutic drugs. The most common mechanism encountered in the laboratory is the increased efflux of hydrophobic cytotoxic drugs that is mediated by a family of energy-dependent transporters. Besides, resistance to apoptosis can also cause failure in the treatment of leukemia. Recently, we have introduced 4-(4-bromophenyl)-2,3dihydro-N,3-bis(3,4,5-trimethoxyphenyl)-2-oxoidmidazole-1-carboxamide (MZ3) as a novel synthesized combretastatin A-4 analogue which is a potent and specific compound against leukemia cells both in vitro and in vivo. Aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of MZ3 on multidrug-resistant (MDR) cancer cells of leukemia, and explore the antimultidrug-resistant mechanisms. Here, we observed that the MDR leukemia cell models investigated, overexpressing MDR1 (P-gp), were hypersensitive against MZ3. Parental K562, HL60 cells and MDR-1-overexpressing K562R, HL60R cells were employed in this study. MZ3 hypersensitivity was confirmed to be based on great apoptosis induction and cell cycle arrest at unaltered intracellular drug accumulation. Cell proliferation assay demonstrated that, compared with HL60 and K562 cells, HL60R and K562R cells exhibited 1.3-fold and 2.4-fold resistance to MZ3, showing 26.9-fold and 92.2-fold resistance to daunorubicin (DNR) respectively. Moreover, real-time RT-PCR result showed that MZ3 impacted the transcription of MDR1 gene and western blotting results indicated that MZ3 can activate apoptosis on MDR cells by downregulating the anti-apoptotic protein XIAP levels and inducing the decrease in the phosphorylation state of ERK Summarizing, our data demonstrate that MZ3 can inhibit the MDR function of leukemia cells, and it exerts the effect through altering the transcription of MDR1 genes and downregulating the anti-apopotic protein levels. MZ3 may be a potential candidate for further research and development in anti-MDR territory.