Combination of Curcumin and Cisplatin Induces Apoptosis and Anti-migration Effect in Lung Adenocarcinoma through AKT/mTOR Pathway and Independent of MAPK (ERK/RSK) pathway in Vitro

Background: Lung cancer is a leading cause of mortality worldwide. Cisplatin is one of the most common anti-cancer drugs. However, cisplatin loses its sensitivity in the late stages of cancer and has severe side effects. This raises the need for an alternative treatment method such as combination with natural products like curcumin. Aims: This study aimed to investigate the effect of the combination of cisplatin and curcumin on inducing apoptosis and anti-migration effect in A549 lung cancer cell line, as well as their effect on the protein expressions of MAPK downstream mediators ERK1/2 and RSK1, as well as AKT/mTOR pathway, and their effect on the cell cycle phases of A549 cells. Method: This was achieved by conducting MTT assay to measure A549 cell viability, western blotting analysis was used to examine the proteins expression, scratch migration assay was conducted to measure the migration rate of A549 cells, while flow cytometry analysis used to evaluate the cell cycle phases. Results: This study showed that the combination of cisplatin and curcumin significantly decreased the cell viability of A549 cells compared to the single treatment of cisplatin and curcumin at 24hrs and 48hrs time points. Similar effect was observed in the scratch migration assay where the combination of cisplatin and curcumin significantly decreased the migration of A549 cells after 24hrs of treatment compared to the single treatment of cisplatin and curcumin (80.3% 10μM cisplatin and 70.2% 30μM curcumin vs 37.9% combination group ± 2.64, P