Ailanthone Inhibits Proliferation, Migration and Invasion of Osteosarcoma Cells by Downregulating the Serine Biosynthetic Pathway

Osteosarcoma (OS) is a life-threatening disease affecting mainly children and adolescents, it is urgently needed to find novel anticancer agents against it. In the present study, we demonstrated that Ailanthone (AIL), a major component of the Chinese medicine Ailanthus altissima, significantly suppressed cell growth, inhibited cell migration and invasion, induced cell cycle arrest instead of apoptosis in OS cells. Mechanistically, combined transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics analyses revealed that AIL induced widespread changes in metabolic programs in OS cells, while the serine biosynthetic pathway was the most significantly affected pathway. The results were verified by reverse test. Metabolic reprogramming is an essential hallmark of malignancy including OS. Our findings suggest that AIL holds a great potential to be an OS treatment strategy through mediating metabolic reprogramming. To identify the altered pathways in human OS cell line Saos-2 after treatment with AIL