Establishment of a GFP-based cellular model for screening novel proteasome inhibitors

Abstract:

To establish a green fluorescent protein (GFP)-based cellular model for screening proteasome inhibitors from compounds including extracts from Traditional Chinese Medicinal herbs, we transfected A549 cells with lentivirus expression vector pGC-E1-ZU1-GFP, and selected clones stably expressing ZU1-GFP. The A549-ZU1-GFP cells were treated with PS-341 for 24 h, and the accumulation of GFP was analyzed by fluorescence microscope. We found that the fluorescence intensity of A549-ZU1-GFP cells treated with PS-341 was significantly increased as compared to the control. We screened for proteasome inhibitors from compounds including some from Traditional Chinese Medicinal herbs, and the data suggested a few compounds could be novel proteasome inhibitors.