3.5 | DSG inhibited cell survival by inducing UHRF1 protein degradation.
It was reported that UHRF1 depletion remarkably decreased cancer cell proliferation and viability (Liu, et al., 2020). Since DSG induced UHRF1 protein degradation, we tested the impacts of DSG on PCa cell proliferation and viability using CCK-8 assays, and calculated the 50% inhibitory concentrations. DSG inhibited cell proliferation and viability of PCa cell lines in a dose-dependent manner. More importantly, the inhibitory effect of DSG on PCa cells is highly and positively correlated with the expression levels of UHRF1 (Fig. 5a-b). In the effort to validate whether the inhibitory effect of DSG is attributed to UHRF1 inhibition, we re-examined the inhibitory effect of DSG on cell viability of DU145 and PC3 cells when UHRF1 was silenced with siRNAs. The results showed that UHRF1 knockdown attenuated the inhibitory effect of DSG (Fig. 5c-e), suggesting that DSG inhibited cell proliferation and viability of PCa cells by specifically targeting UHRF1 protein.