Curcumin is a natural
polyphenol extracted from the rhizome of Curcuma that has an important antitumour effect, but its effect on adverse psychological stress-induced tumour proliferation and invasion has not been reported to date. Here, we found that
curcumin not only inhibited the growth of xenografts in chronically stressed nude mice, but also decreased the expression of
matrix metalloproteinase (
MMP)-2/9 and CD147 in tumour tissues. Exogenous
norepinephrine (NE) was used to stimulate
glioma cells to simulate the stress environment in vitro, and it was found that
curcumin inhibited the NE-induced proliferation and invasion of
glioma cells in a dose-dependent manner. Further research found that the effects of NE on
glioma cells could lead to the activation of the
mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signalling pathway through β-
adrenergic receptor, while
curcumin suppressed the level of
extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK)1/2 phosphorylation. In addition, blocking ERK1/2 expression with
U0126 resulted in the down-regulated expression of CD147, which further led to the decreased expression of MMP-2 and MMP-9.
Curcumin could also inhibit the expression of
cyclin D1/CDK4/6 and
anti-apoptotic protein Bcl-2/Bcl-XL induced by NE, and induced cell cycle changes and increased apoptosis. Therefore,
curcumin may be a potential candidate
drug for preventing and treating the progression of
glioma induced by adverse psychological stress.