Asiatic acid affects the growth of human osteosarcoma cells by regulating PI3K/AKT and NF-κB dual signal pathways

• Asiatic Acid can act on multiple targets of osteosarcoma. • Asiatic Acid may inhibit the proliferation, migration and invasion of osteosarcoma cells, and promote apoptosis. • Asiatic Acid may inhibit PI3K/AKT and NF-κB signaling pathways of osteosarcoma cells. Osteosarcoma(OS) is a common primary malignant bone tumor, which mostly occurs in children and adolescents. Currently, chemotherapy drugs for the clinical treatment of OS have high side effects and patients are prone to chemotherapy resistance, which reduces the therapeutic effect. Therefore, the development of new therapeutic drugs is very important to reduce the toxicity and adverse reactions of drugs and improve the survival rate of patients. At present, the antitumor activity of traditional Chinese medicine monomers has received extensive attention because of its safety and efficacy. Asiatic acid (AA) is a naturally pentacyclic triterpenoids extracted from Centella asiatica . The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect and mechanism of AA on OS cells in vitro and in vivo. In vitro results showed that AA inhibited the proliferation, migration and invasion of OS cells and was able to induce apoptosis and cycle arrest. In vivo results showed that AA inhibited the growth of OS and the size of lung metastasis in nude mice. Network pharmacology, molecular docking and in vitro experiments prove that AA may play a role in the treatment of OS by inhibiting PI3K/AKT and NF-κB signaling pathways. Our study shows that AA can act on multiple targets of OS and regulate multiple pathways to intervene in the occurrence and development of OS, which may provide reference for the clinical application and development of AA.