Bile acids and synthetic bile acid derivatives induce apop-tosis in various kinds of cancer cells and thus have anti-cancer properties. Recently, it has been suggested that autop-hagy may play an important role in cancer therapy. How-ever, few data are available regarding the role of autophagy in oral cancers and there have been no reports of autophagic cell death in OSCCs (oral squamous cell carcinoma cells) in-duced by HS-1200, a synthetic bile acid derivative. We thus examine whether HS-1200 modulates autophagy in OSCCs. Our findings indicate that HS-1200 has anticancer effects in OSCCs, and we observed in these cells that autophagic vacuoles were visible by monodansylcadaverine (MDC)and acridine orange staining. When we analyzed HS-1200-treated OSCC cells for the presence of biochemical markers, we observed that this treatment directly affects the conversion of LC-3II, degradation of p62/SQSTM1 and full-length beclin-1, clea-vage of ATG5-12 and the activation of caspase. An autop-hagy inhibitor suppressed HS-1200-induced cell death in OSCCs, confirming that autophagy acts as a pro-death signal in these cells. Furthermore, HS-1200 shows anticancer acti-vity against OSCCs via both autophagy and apoptosis. Our current findings suggest that HS-1200 may potentially cont-ribute to oral cancer treatment and thus provide useful infor-mation for the future development of a new therapeutic agent.

• Nam-Mi Jang(Department of Oral Anatomy, School of Dentistry, Pusan National University)
• Sang-Hun Oh(Department of Oral Anatomy, School of Dentistry, Pusan National University)
• Hae-Ryoun Park(Department of Oral Pathology, School of Dentistry, Pusan National University)
• Bong-Soo Park(Department of Oral Anatomy, School of Dentistry, Pusan National University) Correspondence