Sertraline exerts its antitumor functions through both apoptosis and autophagy pathways in acute myeloid leukemia cells

Abstract

It has been found that sertraline, a widely used antidepressant drug, possessed antitumor roles in a variety of cancers including liver cancer, colorectal cancer and lymphoma. In this study, we provided evidences that sertraline had potent antiproliferative activity not only in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) cell lines but also in the fresh leukemia cells from AML patients, and could induce cell death through both apoptosis and autophagy pathways. Moreover, we found that inhibiting autophagy pathway could partially attenuate sertraline-induced apoptosis and cell growth inhibition, indicating that sertraline-induced autophagy process could facilitate AML cell apoptosis to some degree. However, blocking apoptosis pathway seemed no obvious effects on sertraline-caused autophagy as well as cell growth inhibition. Our results suggested a potential application value of sertraline in the treatment of AML patients, furnishing some perspectives for novel therapeutic strategies in leukemia.

Keywords:

• Sertraline
• apoptosis
• autophagy
• acute myeloid leukemia

Acknowledgments

This work was supported in part by National Natural Science Foundation of China [81470317 and 81170508]; Leading Talent Program of Shanghai Municipal Human Resources and Social Security Bureau.

Potential conflict of interest

Disclosure forms provided by the authors are available with the full text of this article online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10428194.2017.1287358.