Artesunate inhibits the cell viability of diffuse large B cell lymphoma cells by increasing the susceptibility to ferroptosis (RNA-seq).

Comparing the effects of artesunate versus DMSO in three DLBCL cell lines, we found a decrease in cell viability to 80%-60%. Over increasing artesunate dosage,we found increasing ROS generation and lipid peroxidation. In combination with the Ferrostatin-1 rescue experiment, we conclude that cell death induced by artesunate is ferroptotic. We compared the transcriptome of the U2932 cell line with and without 100µm artesunate in triplicate. A ferroptosis gene signature is shown to be enriched among the upregulated genes of this comparison. GPX4 protein expression was shown to be downregulated after artesunate in U2932 cells, but not in the rescue experiment with Ferrostatin-1. MT1G gene expression was identified as required for artesunate-mediated ferroptosis via targeted suppression by shRNAs. We present significantly decreased cell viability when combining artesunate with doxorubicin, suggesting a potential translation into clinic for treatment of ABC and GCB DLBCL. To investigate the genes regulated by artesunate-induced cell death phenotype in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma（DLBCL），we extracted total RNA from U2932 cells treated with or without 100 μM artesunate and performed transcript sequencing.