Marine drug Haishengsu increases chemosensitivity to conventional chemotherapy and improves quality of life in patients with acute leukemia

Production of ark shells in China alone was more than 360,000 tons in 2016 (Chinese National Department of Fisheries, 2017). Because of their economic and ecological importance, ark shells have been the subject of considerable research efforts (Sturmer et al., 2009; Morton and Puljas, 2016; Li et al., 2016; Hou et al., 2016). The taxonomy of Arcoida has primarily been based on shell morphology and palaeontological records.

Furthermore, it was shown that tetrandrine (Tet) treatment helps in the chomosensitization of K562/A02 cells by downregulating sorcin . Likewise, haishengsu (HSS), a conventional drug from Tegillarca granosa that suppresses the expression of sorcin and P-gp protein was shown to increase the chemosensitivity in leukemic patients and to induce apoptosis in the drug resistant K562/ADM tumors of mice [62,63]. Taken together, sorcin (22 kDa) is a small penta EF family of soluble calcium (Ca2+) binding protein that shows an association with calcium homeostasis, endometrial receptivity, cancer development, and MDR.

Knockdown of Sorcin expression promoted chemotherapeutic agent-induced apoptosis through c-fos/c-jun and Bcl-2/Bax expressions, which has also been observed in breast cancer [27,39]. The marine drug Haishengsu has been proven to reduce the expression of Sorcin, whereby it increased chemosensitivity to conventional chemotherapy and subsequently improved the quality of life in patients with acute leukemia [40,41]. Gastric cancer (GC) is the second leading cause of cancer-related mortality worldwide.

The conventional chemotherapy is still a major therapeutic approach for the treatment of localized and metastasized cancers [2]. However, the chemotherapeutic agent does not specifically target to the cancer cells, showing the toxic effects on rapidly dividing normal cells and resulting in side effects [3–5]. Therefore, targeted therapies were developed to specifically trigger cancer cell death or block molecular targets regulating tumor formation and progression.

Sorcin expression is directly linked to ABCB1 up-regulation, and is itself involved in regulation of the ABCB1-dependent MDR phenotype. The modulation of Sorcin expression and activity (Li et al., 2016a; Sun et al., 2017) is emerging as a possible strategy for overcoming tumorigenesis, cancer-related EMT and MDR. ADAM22 is a non-catalytic metalloprotease involved in both regulation of cell adhesion and spreading and inhibition of cell proliferation.