A combination therapy of ingredients from TCM for the prevention and treatment of gastric cancer by targeting HER2/ PD-L1

• Main Authors: Ling Li (Author), Jia-wei Li (Author), Xiao-jie Jin (Author), Cheng-hao Li (Author), Jun-jie Li (Author), Ming Fang (Author), Lu Qiu (Author), Si-yu Wang (Author), Wei Chu (Author), Yong-qi Liu (Author)
• Format: Book
• Published: Elsevier, 2021-12-01T00:00:00Z.
• Subjects: article
• Online Access: Connect to this object online.
• Notes: 2667-1425; 10.1016/j.prmcm.2021.100021
• Keywords: Gastric cancer; HER2/PD-L1; combined treatment; traditional Chinese medicine; quercetin/formononetin; Other systems of medicine; RZ201-999; Therapeutics. Pharmacology; RM1-950
• Source: Pharmacological Research - Modern Chinese Medicine, Vol 1, Iss , Pp 100021- (2021)

Gastric cancer (GC) is a globally important disease. Targeted therapies licensed to treat gastric cancer include trastuzumab, which targets HER2, and nivolumab or pembrolizumab, which block PD-1/PD-L1. The main challenge of tumor molecule-targeted drugs is resistance. Based on the multicomponent and multitarget characteristics of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and our previous research on Guiqi Baizhu Prescription (GQBZP) in targeting HER2/PD-L1, we used different cell models to verify the effect of quercetin targeting of HER2 and formononetin targeting of PD-L1. The results show that quercetin can inhibit MKN-45 cell proliferation by targeting HER2 to inhibit the PI3K-AKT pathway, and formononetin can regulate T-cell function by inhibiting the PD-1/PD-L1 pathway. We also used GC MKN-45 cells in a T lymphocyte co-culture model to show that quercetin and formononetin co-treatment can regulate T cell function and inhibit MKN-45 cell proliferation. More importantly, quercetin with formononetin treatment had a greater effect than treatment with either quercetin or formononetin alone. We believe that quercetin and formononetin may be useful to target HER2 and inhibit PD-1/PD-L1 in GC.