DOI: 10.21276/sajp.2017.6.2.1

Pages: 40-46

Ovarian cancer is one of the most common lethal gynecological malignancies. Despite an initial 70-80% response rate, most patients relapse within 1-2 years and develop chemo resistance. Tumor cells have the capacity to respond to chemotherapy through multiple cell death pathways such as apoptosis and autophagy. In this study, we have attempted to evaluate the effect of metformin (an antidiabetic drug) in ovarian cancer because of its promising effect in other solid tumors. In this study, the human ovarian cancer cell line SKOV3 cell line was used to assess the effect of metformin on apoptosis and autophagy. The cancer cells were treated with metformin. MTT, Flowcytometry and Western blotting were used to characterize the effects of treatments. Metformin inhibited proliferation of SKOV3 ovarian cancer cells, caused cell cycle arrest in G0/G1 and S phase, induced apoptosis by modulating apoptotic proteins Bcl-2 and Bax but was not able to induce autophagy as seen by decreased Beclin expression. These data illustrated that induction of apoptosis and inhibition of autophagy by metformin may enhance the cell-killing effect of metformin in multidrug-resistant human ovarian cancer cells like SKOV3, Hence, it may represent a novel approach to deal with chemo-resistance by using metformin as an anticancer modality.