Resveratrol inhibits Interleukin-6 induced invasion of human gastric cancer cells

Previous studies show that migration and invasion are the primary causes of death in patients with gastric carcinoma. Increasing evidences have been shown Interleukin-6 could stimulate cancer cells invasion and be associated with cancer development. However, its role in gastric cancer has never been investigated. As an anticancer drug isolated from Chinese medicine, resveratrol was reported to inhibit cancer cells growth and induce apoptosis, but its roles in gastric cancer have not been well understood. In this study, we found that Interleukin-6 was upregulated in blood of gastric cancer patients by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. In gastric cancer cell line model, we found that non-cytotoxic concentration of resveratrol inhibited the Interleukin-6 induced SGC7901 cell invasion and matrix metalloproteinases activation. Our studies showed that IL-6 induced SGC7901 cell invasion depends on the Raf/MAPK pathway activation, resveratrol could inhibit this pathway activation. We further showed that resveratrol inhibits the IL-6 induced metastasis by vein injection of luciferase-labeled cancer cells. In conclusion, these results indicate that Interleukin-6 promotes tumor growth and metastasis in gastric cancer, resveratrol has the potential to prevent the Interleukin-6 induced gastric cancer metastasis by blocking the Raf/MAPK signaling activation.