Compound kushen injection and YFSJ reduce gefitinib resistance in gefitinib resistant lung cancer cell lines

Compound Kushen Injection (CKI) has been used in clinics for nearly 20 years to treat different kinds of cancers. In this study, we found that CKI inhibited gefitinib resistant cell line proliferation, reduced drug resistance and improved anti-cancer effects when associated with gefitinib in a dose-dependent fashion. We also identified candidate CKI associated molecular mechanisms that might reduce drug resistance using transcriptome analysis methods, including gene differential expression analysis and pathway over-representation analysis. Multiple pathways were perturbed and the PI3K/AKT/MTOR and autophagy pathways were identified as the potential primary target pathways of CKI in this context. We also investigated the molecular mechanisms of another TCM, Yifei-Sanjie Wan (YFSJ) on reducing gefitinib resistance using transcriptome analysis. Overall design: High-depth paired-end RNA-seq from H1975 lung cancer cell line. Each sample contains 3 biological replicates.