ArticlePloS one2012
L-carnitine is an endogenous HDAC inhibitor selectively inhibiting cancer cell growth in vivo and in vitro.
Article in PloS one, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 44 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The trial behind it
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Who cites it
44 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 89 citations in OpenAlex.
- Pooled it
- Transcriptomic and Metabolomic Profiling Reveals the Antiproliferative Mechanism of Goose Serum and Plasma in SW1990 Cells.Biology · 2026Article
- L-carnitine in metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease: mechanisms and therapeutic potential.Frontiers in nutrition · 2026Review
- Comprehensive review of the expanding roles of the carnitine pool in metabolic physiology: beyond fatty acid oxidation.Journal of translational medicine · 2025Review
- BBOX1 restrains TBK1-mTORC1 oncogenic signaling in clear cell renal cell carcinoma.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Dysfunction of the carnitine cycle in tumor progression.Heliyon · 2024Review
- Histone acylation at a glance.Journal of cell science · 2024Review
- Safety assessment of five candidate probiotic lactobacilli using comparative genome analysis.Access microbiology · 2024Article
- Protein acylation: mechanisms, biological functions and therapeutic targets.Signal transduction and targeted therapy · 2022Review
- Article
- High-fat diet-induced nonalcoholic steatohepatitis is accelerated by low carnitine and impaired glucose tolerance in novel murine models.Laboratory investigation; a journal of technical methods and pathology · 2022Article
- Ferulic acid and berberine, via Sirt1 and AMPK, may act as cell cleansing promoters of healthy longevity.Open heart · 2022Review
- Potential of histone deacetylase inhibitors in the control and regulation of prostate, breast and ovarian cancer.Frontiers in chemistry · 2022Review
- Radiation-induced Adaptive Response: New Potential for Cancer Treatment.Clinical cancer research : an official journal of the American Association for Cancer Research · 2020Review
- Predicting Response to Neoadjuvant Therapy in Colorectal Cancer Patients the Role of Messenger-and Micro-RNA Profiling.Cancers · 2020Review
- The Nutraceutical Value of Carnitine and Its Use in Dietary Supplements.Molecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020Review
- Review
- Acetyl-L-Carnitine downregulates invasion (CXCR4/CXCL12, MMP-9) and angiogenesis (VEGF, CXCL8) pathways in prostate cancer cells: rationale for prevention and interception strategies.Journal of experimental & clinical cancer research : CR · 2019Article
- Parkin facilitates proteasome inhibitor-induced apoptosis via suppression of NF-κB activity in hepatocellular carcinoma.Cell death & disease · 2019Article
- HDAC1 and HDAC2 independently regulate common and specific intrinsic responses in murine enteroids.Scientific reports · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
16 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
L-carnitine (LC) is generally believed to transport long-chain acyl groups from fatty acids into the mitochondrial matrix for ATP generation via the citric acid cycle. Based on Warburg's theory that most cancer cells mainly depend on glycolysis for ATP generation, we hypothesize that, LC treatment would lead to disturbance of cellular metabolism and cytotoxicity in cancer cells. In this study, Human hepatoma HepG2, SMMC-7721 cell lines, primary cultured thymocytes and mice bearing HepG2 tumor were used. ATP content was detected by HPLC assay. Cell cycle, cell death and cell viability were assayed by flow cytometry and MTS respectively. Gene, mRNA expression and protein level were detected by gene microarray, Real-time PCR and Western blot respectively. HDAC activities and histone acetylation were detected both in test tube and in cultured cells. A molecular docking study was carried out with CDOCKER protocol of Discovery Studio 2.0 to predict the molecular interaction between L-carnitine and HDAC. Here we found that (1) LC treatment selectively inhibited cancer cell growth in vivo and in vitro; (2) LC treatment selectively induces the expression of p21(cip1) gene, mRNA and protein in cancer cells but not p27(kip1); (4) LC increases histone acetylation and induces accumulation of acetylated histones both in normal thymocytes and cancer cells; (5) LC directly inhibits HDAC I/II activities via binding to the active sites of HDAC and induces histone acetylation and lysine-acetylation accumulation in vitro; (6) LC treatment induces accumulation of acetylated histones in chromatin associated with the p21(cip1) gene but not p27(kip1) detected by ChIP assay. These data support that LC, besides transporting acyl group, works as an endogenous HDAC inhibitor in the cell, which would be of physiological and pathological importance.
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