Salmonella induce autophagy in melanoma by the downregulation of AKT/mTOR pathway

Salmonella have been demonstrated to inhibit tumor growth. However, the mechanism of Salmonella-induced tumor cell death is less defined. Autophagy is a cellular process that mediates the degradation of long-lived proteins and unwanted organelles in the cytosol. Tumor cells frequently display lower levels of basal autophagic activity than their normal counterparts and fail to increase autophagic activity in response to stresses. Autophagy is involved in the cell defense elimination of bacteria. The signaling pathways leading to activation of Salmonella-induced autophagy in tumor cells remain to be elucidated. We used autophagy inhibitor (3-Methyladenine) and apoptosis inhibitor (Z-VAD-FMK) to demonstrate that Salmonella may induce cell death via apoptosis and autophagic pathway. Meanwhile, we suggested that Salmonella induce autophagy in a dose-and time-dependent manner. The autophagic markers were increased after tumor cell infected with Salmonella. In addition, the protein express levels of phosph-protein kinase B (P-AKT), phosph-mammalian targets of rapamycin (P-mTOR), phosph-p70 ribosomal s6 kinase (P-p70s6K) in tumor cells were decreased by western analysis after Salmonella infection. In conclusion, our results point out that Salmonella induce the autophagic signaling pathway via downregulation of AKT/mTOR pathway. Herein, our findings that Salmonella in controlling tumor growth may induce autophagic signal pathway.