Propranolol selectively inhibits cervical cancer cell growth by suppressing the cGMP/PKG pathway

Aim: To observe the effect of propranolol in cervical cancer and investigate the mechanism of the effect． Methods and Results: We found 5 direct protein targets (DPTs) of propranolol (PRO) by DrugBank5.0 firstly. Next, we analyzed protein-protein interaction (PPI) network and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathways of PRO DPTs and the result showed that PRO was linked with cGMP/PKG pathway. Then, we recognized the top 38 upexpressed genes of cervical cancer (CC) based original microarray datasets (GSE7803, GSE9750, GSE39001 and GSE63514). Further, we analyzed the biological process with the 38 overexpressed genes by STRING. We found some of overexpressed genes of CC participated in GMP biosynthetic process. Lastly, the function of PRO in CC was validated by MTT assay, Western blotting, flow cytometry and colony formation assay methods. We verified PRO can suppress cGMP/PKG pathway then inhibits CC cell growth. Conclusion: The bioinformatical analysis combine with traditional experiment can help us understanding potential molecular mechanism about how PRO acting in CC. This method is a new paradigm which can guide future researches about mechanism in existing diseases and drugs.