Pterostilbene suppresses human endometrial cancer cells in vitro by down-regulating miR-663b

Resveratrol has long been known as an antioxidant and a chemopreventive agent. Similar to resveratrol, pterostilbene (PT) is also a phenolic compound extracted from the Vitis species. However, there are few studies on the antitumor effect of PT. Thus, we investigated the effects of PT on the endometrial cancer (EC) cells in vitro and the related molecular mechanisms. Treatment of EC cell lines HTB-111 and Ishikawa with PT (25–100 μmol/L) dose-dependently suppressed the cell viability and induced apoptosis. Using miR microarrays, we examined the miR expression profile in Ishikawa cells with or without PT, and revealed that miR-663b was the most decreased in PT-treated Ishikawa cells. Furthermore, we predicted and verified that the pro-apoptosis factor BCL2L14 is the direct target of miR-663b. Over-expression of miR-663b and knock-down of BCL2L14 counteracted the suppressing effects of PT on HTB-111 and Ishikawa cells. In addition, we evaluated the miR-663b levels in EC tissues of 51 patients using an in situ hybridization technique. With the median of the score of miR-663b as a cut-off value, these EC patients were divided into two groups, and the patients with high miR-663b expression had significantly poor prognosis.