Vitexin Inhibits the Proliferation and Promotes the Apoptosis of Gastric Cancer Cells via Phosphatidylinositol-3-Kinase (PI3K)/Protein Kinase B (Akt)/The Mammalian Target of Rapamycin (mTOR) Signaling Pathway

Gastric cancer (GC) is a kind of digestive tract malignancy that has very high morbidity and mortality, making it crucial to find new drug treatments. Vitexin is a kind of flavonoid compound, which has anti-tumor, anti-inflammatory, analgesic and antiviral effects, etc. However, the specific role of vitexin in GC is still unclear. In this study, the expression of the survival rate and apoptosis was detected by CCK-8 and flow cytometry after vitexin acted on cells. Plasmid transfection technique was used to overexpress PI3K. Expression of PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathway-related proteins, autophagic-related proteins (Atg14, beclin-1, P62) and apoptotic-related proteins (bcl-2, Bax, cleaved caspase3) were detected by Western blot. We found that the cell survival rate decreased with the increasing time and dosage of vitexin. When vitexin acted on cells, the expression of p-PI3K, p-AKT and p-mTOR was significantly decreased, the degree of autophagy was increased, and the apoptosis rate was obviously increased. However, the overexpression of PI3K, the level of autophagy and apoptosis rate of cells which were given vitexin significantly decreased. In conclusion, Vitexin induces autophagy by inhibiting PI3K/AKT/mTOR signaling pathway, thereby inhibiting proliferation and promoting apoptosis of GC cells.