Antimetastatic potentials of Kaempferol on oral cancer cell

Objectives: Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) is one of the most common head and neck cancers with a poor prognosis due to frequent lymph node metastasis and local invasion. A growing number of in vitro studies have been conducted on the potential anticancer activity of flavonoids in various cancer cell lines. However, the antimetastatic activities of kaempferol, one of the important flavonoids, in human oral squamous carcinoma SCC-4 cells have not been understood clearly.

Methods: To further investigate the impacts of kaempferol in tumor metastasis, SCC-4 cells were treated with kaempferol at various concentrations, up to 100 uM, Furthermore, gelatin zymography and casein zymography were performed to evaluate the impacts of kaempferol on matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-2, and urokinase plasminogen activator (uPA) secretion in SCC-4 cells.

Results: We first observed that kaempferol exerted a dose- and time-dependent inhibitory effect on the invasion and migration of SCC-4 cells. Results also showed that kaempferol treatment may decrease the expressions of MMP-2, u-PA in a concentration-dependent manner together with altered expression levels of their endogenous inhibitors. Furthermore, RT-PCR showed that kaempferol may regulate the expressions of MMP-2 and u-PA on the transcriptional level.

Conclusion: Taken together, these results suggest that kaempferol could inhibit the invasion and migration of human oral cancer cells and that the effects may partially because of the decreased productions of MMP-2 and uPA. Thus, kaempferol could be applicable to be a potential antimetastatic agent of SCC-4 cells.