Medicinal and Pharmaceutical Chemistry Commons^™

Honokiol Enhances Paclitaxel Efficacy In Multi-Drug Resistant Human Cancer Model Through The Induction Of Apoptosis, Xu Wang, Jonathan J. Beitler, Hong Wang, Michael J. Lee, Wen Huang, Lydia Koenig, Sreenivas Nannapaneni, Arm R. Amin, Michael Bonner, Hyung Ju C. Shin, Zhuo Georgia Chen, Jack L. Arbiser, Dong M. Shin

Pharmaceutical Science and Research

Resistance to chemotherapy remains a major obstacle in cancer therapy. This study aimed to evaluate the molecular mechanism and efficacy of honokiol in inducing apoptosis and enhancing paclitaxel chemotherapy in pre-clinical multi-drug resistant (MDR) cancer models, including lineage-derived human MDR (KB-8-5, KB-C1, KB-V1) and their parental drug sensitive KB-3-1 cancer cell lines. In vitro analyses demonstrated that honokiol effectively inhibited proliferation in KB-3-1 cells and the MDR derivatives (IC₅₀ ranging 3.35±0.13 µg/ml to 2.77±0.22 µg/ml), despite their significant differences in response to paclitaxel (IC₅₀ ranging 1.66±0.09 ng/ml to 6560.9±439.52 ng/ml). Honokiol induced mitochondria-dependent and death receptor-mediated apoptosis in …