Novel agent DMAMCL suppresses osteosarcoma growth and decreases the stemness of osteosarcoma stem cell

Osteosarcoma (OS) is the most common primary malignancy of bone that mostly affects children, adolescents, and young people. Despite advances have been made in multimodal therapy of OS, the long-term survival rate has reached a plateau, and the main obstacles are bad response to chemotherapy and gained chemoresistance. In this study, we tested the therapeutic effect of a newly reported drug, DMAMCL, on OS. Five human OS cell lines (143B, MNNG, MG63, Saos-2, U-2OS), and the mouse fibroblast cell line (NIH3T3) and human retinal epithelial cell (ARPE19) were used. The anti-tumor effect of DMAMCL was studied by MTS assay or IncuCyte-Zoom (in vitro), and Xenograft-mice-model (in vivo). Changes of cell cycle, apoptotic cells, caspase3/7 activities, and stemness after DMAMCL treatment were investigated. BAX siRNAs were used to knockdown the expression of BAX. Expressions of CyclinB1, CDC2, BCL-2 family, PARP, CD133, and Nanog were measured by Western Blotting. DMAMCL-induced dose-dependent OS cell death in vitro, and suppressed tumor growth and extended the survival of xenograft-bearing mice. DMAMCL-induced G2/M phase arrest in vitro, and apoptosis both in vitro and in vivo. Down-regulation of BAX expression attenuated the DMAMCL-induced OS cell death in vitro. We also found that DMAMCL inhibited the stemness in OS cells. These results indicated that DMAMCL possess therapeutic value in OS and may be a promising candidate for the new drug discovery for OS therapy.