Breast cancer (BC) is one of the most incongruous cancers with precise subtypes that have developed intend drug treatments for breast tumours. Earlier research has revealed that a modified autophagy level can affect the progress of breast cancer. Despite that, the molecular changes in deprivation breed autophagic responses in breast cancer cells have not been fully explained. The current experiments demonstrated that an upregulation of SNAP-25, Light Chain-3 B-I, II protein elevated the level and downregulation of the protein p62 in cells treated by HBSS, at the same time, observed a higher level of autophagosome while using high green fluorescence intensity of LCB-I, II and SNAP-25 protein by confocal microscopy. In addition, we investigated the expression of 3 autophagy associated proteins and 1 autophagic synaptic vesicle signaling pathway related protein using western blot analysis. Among 4 proteins, we revealed 3 proteins that were expressed in starvation induced breast tumor cells, at the same time one protein was down regulated in nutritional depleted MDA-MB-231-cells. The above data suggests the autophagic response to nutritional depletion induced autophagy on the molecular mechanism in SNAP-25 as a novel drug therapy in breast cancer.

Keywords: Autophagy, Starvation, SNAP-25, MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cells