Abstract
Background: According to several studies, hypoxia-inducible factor-1α (HIF-1α) and insulin-like growth factor 1 receptor (IGF1R) promote cancer progression and drug resistance. The overexpression of IGF1R and HIF-1 α is observed in various cancers, including breast and colon cancers. Thus, we tried to inhibit the progression of tumor cells by blocking IGF1R and HIF-1α.
Methods: This study used Lipofectamine to transfect small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) into tumor cells. We treated murine mammary carcinoma (4T1) and murine colon carcinoma (CT26) cells with anti-IGF1R and anti-HIF-1 siRNAs. The real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay studied the impact of siRNA transfection on the mRNA levels of affected factors. Moreover, the viability of cancer cells was investigated by the MTT assay.
Results: The investigations demonstrated that the mRNA levels of IGF1R and HIF-1α strongly reduced in tumor cell lines following siRNA transfection. Moreover, silencing IGF1R and HIF-1 additively downregulated cell viability in cancer cell lines.
Conclusion: These findings imply that cancer combination therapy based on IGF1R and HIF-1α targeting may be a novel promising approach for the immunotherapy of breast and colorectal cancers; however, more study is required.