Tri-chalcone suppressed breast cancer cell proliferation and induced apoptosis through intrinsic and extrinsic pathways

Breast cancer development depends critically on antiproliferative and apoptotic mechanisms. However, the mechanisms underlying the antiproliferative and apoptosis effects of breast cancer treated with tri-chalcone remain unclear. Tri-chalcones have been demonstrated in prior studies to inhibit the proliferation of breast cancer cells (MCF-7). Following the discovery, this study seeks to investigate the effect of tri-chalcone compounds on targets involved in antiproliferative and apoptosis mechanisms. In this study, we employed bioinformatics analysis along with in vitro evaluation using tri-chalcone-treated MCF-7 cells to determine the responses of antiproliferative and apoptosis mechanisms. The analysis revealed that the compounds interact with six apoptosis target receptors: TNFα, Bak, Bcl-2, caspase-9, and caspase-8. Tri-chalcone S1-2 exhibited the strongest binding affinities for TNFα (−7.39 kcal/mol), caspase-8 (−8.43 kcal/mol), caspase-9 (−8.53 kcal/mol), Bcl-2 (−8.51 kcal/mol), and Bak (−7.15 kcal/mol). The tri-chalcone S1-2 paired with the corresponding proteins showed minor flexibility and extremely small changes of less than 0.25 nm during the MD simulation. Additionally, tri-chalcone S1-2 had a significant inhibitory effect on the proliferation of MCF-7 cells (5.31 ± 0.26 µg/mL) compared to other compounds. S1-2 also induced apoptosis, affecting nearly half (43.80%) of the total early and late apoptosis in MCF-7 cells. S1-2-treated MCF-7 cells also demonstrated upregulations of genes TNFα (1.50), Bak (1.42), caspase-8 (1.24), and caspase-9 (1.61), accompanied by a downregulation of gene Bcl-2 (0.71). The discovery gives us a better understanding of how tri-chalcone S1-2 suppressed MCF-7 cell proliferation and induced apoptosis through intrinsic and extrinsic pathways.