Royal jelly suppresses invasive potential of colorectal cancer cells by attenuating Vimentin and Snail

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is among most frequent cancers, and dietary habits play important role in elevating risk of CRC initiation. Invasive potential of cancer cells is particularly problematic in cancer treatment, and presents key step in metastatic process. Therefore, science is turning to natural products in order to ameliorate standard chemotherapeutical approaches. Royal jelly is well known bee product that has been traditionally used for centuries because of its significant pharmacological properties and beneficial effects on human wellbeing. Moreover, it already showed remarkable anticancer activity, especially regarding metastasis of various cancer types. Hence, we aimed to investigate royal jelly's potential on invasiveness of colorectal carcinoma cell line (SW-480) by applying Transwell assay with collagen layer, simulating extracellular matrix. Moreover, immunofluorescent technique was used to evaluate the protein expression of proinvasive markers Vimentin and Snail. Cells were treated with royal jelly (RJ), sampled from Serbia, in two selected concentrations 10 and 100 µg/mL, and results were analyzed after 24 h. We observed responsiveness of SW-480 cells to applied treatment when it comes to suppression of invasive potential, whereat this antiinvasive activity of RJ was showed to be dose-dependent. Also, the notable decrease of Vimentin and Snail expression was noticed, which is in correlation with RJ's antiinvasive property. Applied treatment was able to induce strong inhibition of Vimentin and Snail in SW-480 cells, when compared to control (untreated) cells, and more prominent inhibitory effect of RJ was noticed on expression of Vimentin in this cell line. The exerted effects of RJ on suppression of invasive properties of SW-480 cells was obviously due to reduced expression of Vimentin and Snail. In conclusion, our report indicate the possible molecular mechanism of antiinvasive activity of RJ on colorectal carcinoma cell line. This bee product showed pronounced and promising effects on carcinoma cells in vitro, however, our future research will focus on more detailed studies regarding invasion as significant process in cancer progression.