Comment on “Preclinical assessment of histone deacetylase inhibitor quisinostat as a therapeutic agent against esophageal squamous cell carcinoma”
Jiong Lin1
Received: 11 March 2021 / Accepted: 21 April 2021
Ⓒ The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2021
Abstract
Recently, we read a paper “Preclinical assessment of histone deacetylase inhibitor quisinostat as a therapeutic agent against esophageal squamous cell carcinoma” published in Investigational New Drugs. Quisinostat may be a promising drug candidate for the treatment of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma. However, some problems existing in the methods part of this paper are worthy of comment.
Keywords Quisinostat . Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma . Invasion
Dear Editor,
Recently, we read a paper in Investigational New Drugs “Preclinical assessment of histone deacetylase inhibitor quisinostat as a therapeutic agent against esophageal squa- mous cell carcinoma“[1]. Authors demonstrated that quisinostat, an inhibitor of histone deacetylase, suppressed the malignant behaviors of esophageal squamous cell carcino- ma (ESCC), suggesting quisinostat could be a promising drug candidate for the treatment of disease. However, some prob- lems existing in this paper are worthy of comment.In this paper, quisinostat suppressed the invasion and mi- gration of ESCC cells in a dose-dependent manner when cells were treated with quisinostat (0, 0.1, 0.3, 1µM) for 24 h. However, authors also revealed that quisinostat significantly induced G2/M phase arrest and apoptosis in ESCC cells after treatment with the same concentrations (0, 0.1, 0.3, 1µM) for the same time (24 h). These results strongly suggested that the cause responsible for inhibition of migration and invasion of cells at high concentration could be due to apoptosis induction of quisinostat. Authors could incubate the cells with quisinostat at a lower concentration or for a short time when studying the inherent effects of drugs on the migration and invasion ability of cells without apoptosis induction. This made the results more convincing.
Author contributions Study concept and design, data analysis, method- ology, drafting manuscript, review and editing, supervision, J.L.
Data availability All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article.
Declarations
Ethics approval and consent to participate This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.
Consent for publication Authors have approved the article to be published.
Research involving human participants and /or animals None.
Informed consent This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.
Conflict of interest Author Jiong Lin declares that he has no conflict of interest.
Jiong Lin [email protected]
1 Department of Oncology, Affiliated Hospital of Guangdong Medical University, No. 27 South of Ren Min Road,Zhanjiang 524200, Guangdong, China
References
1. Zhong L, Zhou S, Tong RS, Shi JY, Bai L, Zhu YX, Duan XM, Liu WZ, Bao JK, Su LY, Peng Q (2019) Preclinical assessment of his- tone deacetylase inhibitor quisinostat as a therapeutic agent against
Invest New Drugs esophageal squamous cell carcinoma[J]. Invest New Drugs 37(4): 616–624
Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to JNJ-26481585 jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.