Physcion 8-O-β-glucopyranoside suppresses the metastasis of breast cancer in vitro and in vivo by modulating DNMT1
Authors: Fuxia Li
Di Fan
Xia Chen
Hua Guo
Journal: Pharmacological Reports (2017)
Discipline: PHARMACOLOGY & TOXICOLOGY
Keywords: AMPK; Breast cancer; DNMT1; Metastasis; Physcion 8-O-β-glucopyranoside
Affiliations: Shandong Provincial Hospital Affiliated to Shandong University, Jianan, Shandong 250021, China., Shandong Provincial Hospital Affiliated to Shandong University, Jianan, Shandong 250021, China. Electronic address: ., China Pharmaceutical University, Nanjing, Jiangsu 211198, China.

Abstract:  Background: The present study is designed to explore the metastasis-inhibitory effect of physcion 8-O-β-glucopyranoside (PG) in human breast cancer, and the mechanisms underlying its role in tumor metastasis. Methods: Both in vitro and in vivo studies were conducted. Cell migration and invasion were analyzed by transwell assay. The translocation of β-catenin from the nucleus to cytoplasm membrane was demonstrated by immunofluorescent staining. The expression of signaling molecules was determined by Western blot or qRT-PCR. Results: The present study showed that PG suppressed the migration, invasion, and EMT of breast cancer cells MDA-MB-231 in a dose-dependent manner. The results also revealed that impairment of the metastatic potential caused by PG was associated with the activation of AMPK and downregulation of both DNMT1 and Sp1. Moreover, the data from the in vivo model also supported the in vitro findings, which showed that inhibition of metastasis by PG was associated with the downregulation of DNMT1 and Sp1 as well as increased level of phosphorylated AMPK. Conclusion: The present study showed that PG could suppress the metastasis of breast cancer, which highlighted a novel pharmacological application of this compound. Given the aggressive properties of breast cancer, the current study suggests that PG can serve as a safe therapeutic agent for suppressing breast cancer metastasis, although additional data is necessitated. 

Retracted: Yes

PubPeer comments:
 This paper is flawed because the ranking method based on the score function is not order preserving with respect to the arithmetic operations and the proposed aggregation operation. A decision making procedure based on such a ranking method is meaningless. ![file] , 
 #1 It seems that you were very interested in the ranking methods even though this is not the topic of this paper. Could you please pay attention to the main idea of a paper when you make a comment? It may waste our time to answer the questions from a person who did not read a paper carefully. It seems that you were not an expert in this area. Regarding the ranking method of HFEs, it is about the complete order and partial order. As far as we know, there are many methods to rank HFNs since we could not get the complete order but only partial order. The partial order is still an open question and you are also welcomed to propose new methods for ranking. Different methods have different scopes of applications. We can improve the existing methods, but it may be not a good idea to deny the contribution of previous scholars and their past work. We should note that we do not need crisp values in many times to solve a ranking problem. Some methods may be easy and have flaws, but if we do not have a high requirement about the accuracy, these methods can be used since they may be more efficient in deducing a ranking for a decision making problem. More reply to this issue could be found here: https: pubpeer.com publications 7803CF906784F287F8261176A52D9E https: pubpeer.com publications 763257B958790969FC1AF53012DD5B#20 https: pubpeer.com publications E24CDA01466F46323225C55C13F905#8 I hope you are now understood this issue based on these discussions. You are also welcomed to join our community and make more contribution to the theory and applications. , 
 #2 Quoted from #2, bolded by me.  Some methods **may be easy and have flaws**, but **if we do not have a high requirement about the accuracy**, these methods can be used since they may be more efficient in deducing a ranking for a decision making problem. This is actually a very interesting viewpoint. It has been repeatedly claimed in thousands of papers just like this one that the conventional methods cannot handle the evaluation information accurately and require more sophisticated methods like hesitant fuzzy elements, dual hesitant fuzzy elements, Pythagorean fuzzy sets, q-rung orthopair fuzzy sets, etc. Now, Prof. Huchang Liao, the author of dozens, if not hundreds, of such type papers, claimed that these methods would be useful u201c**if we do not have a high requirement about the accuracy**u201d. Seriously? ,