Evaluating the anti-metastatic potential of curcumin against TGFβ induced EMT process in A549 cells using systems biology tools

Curcumin (diferuloylmethane) is the bioactive phenolic compound, and the mechanism by which curcumin exerts its anti-metastatic effects was comprehensive and diverse. Several studies reported the anti-metastasis effect of curcumin by its ability to modulate the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) process in different cancers, and the underlying molecular mechanism is poorly understood. EMT is a highly conserved biological process in which epithelial cells acquire mesenchymal-like characteristics by losing their cell-cell junctions and polarity deviating cellular mechanism towards cancer metastasis triggering cancer cells to escape from a primary site to distant locations causing spread of cancer to the entire system ultimately leading to death. In this perspective, we explored the anti-metastatic potential and mechanism of curcumin on the EMT process by establishing in-vitro EMT model using A549 cells induced by TGF-β1. Our results showed that curcumin inhibited EMT by regulating the expression of crucial mesenchymal markers such as MMP2, vimentin, and N-Cadherin. Besides, the transcriptional analysis revealed that curcumin treatment differentially regulated the expression of 75 genes in the NanoString n-counter platform. Further PPI (Protein-protein interaction) network and clusters analysis of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) revealed their involvement in essential biological processes. Altogether, the analysis gives a comprehensive overview of the anti-metastatic effect of curcumin in inhibiting TGF-β1 induced EMT in A549 cells. The present study consists of two samples from human derived A549 cell lines. The present study does not contain replicates. The samples include both control and treated samples.