Comparative proteomics to investigate the in vitro antiproliferative effect of dietary polyphenols against K562 leukemia cells

Objective: The lack of success with classical targeted therapies in cancer treatment has forced researchers to employ either combined therapies or agents that interfere with multiple pathways. In this study, a proteomic evaluation was performed to understand the in vitro antiproliferative effect of dietary compounds against leukemia cells in proteome level. Typical human cell models of leukemia (i.e., wild K562 cells and multi-drug resistant leukemia cells K562/R) were treated with rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis L.) extracts rich in polyphenols and a comparative proteomic study was performed to identify up- or down-regulated proteins by in vitro antiproliferative effect of polyphenols. Methods: The protein fraction from the polyphenol-treated and control K562 and K562/R cells were separated through two dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (2DE) and their proteomic profiles compared by image analysis. The proteins identified to be overexpressed or underexpressed in K562 and K562/R cells after the polyphenol treatment were identified by MALDI-TOF/TOF MS. Results: The results in this study were evaluated to understand the mode of action of these dietary constituents against leukemia cell proliferation. Dietary polyphenols extracted from rosemary bring about the up regulation or down regulation of different proteins on leukemia cells. These proteins are related to tumorigenesis, cancer proliferation and antioxidant activity. Conclusion: Our results revealed that the studied rosemary extract rich in polyphenols induced the down regulation of adenine phosphoribosyl transferase and annexin A1 in K562/R cell lines and tubulin alpha-1C chain in K562 cell lines. According to the expression proteomics results in this study, it could be concluded that the rosemary polyphenols shows in vitro antiproliferative activity in K562 and K562/R leukemia cell lines.