Evaluation of Selenite Effects on Selenoproteins and Cytokinome in Human Hepatoma Cell Lines

The need to explore new alternative therapeutic strategies and chemoprevention methods for hepatocellular carcinoma is growing significantly. Selenium is a trace element that plays a critical role in physiological processes, and is used in cancer chemoprevention. The aim of this work was to test in vitro the effect of sodium selenite on the human hepatoma cell lines, HepG2 and Huh7, to assess its effect on the expression of GPX1, SELK and SELENBP1 and also to evaluate its action on inflammation determinants such as cytokines. Our results show that: (i) the increase observed for the GPX1 and SELK expression is correlated with an increase in the sodium selenite concentration, also evidencing an inverse association between the levels of these two proteins and SELENBP1; (ii) the selenium concentrations evaluated in protein extracts increase in proportional way with the selenite concentrations used in the treatment, suggesting that other selenoproteins can also be modulated and should be evaluated in further studies, and (iii) some cytokines, VEGF and three pro-inflammatory cytokines, i.e., IL-6, IL-8, and IL-17, decreased with an increasing selenite concentration. Finally, interactomic studies show that GPX1 and SELK, and the four pro-inflammatory cytokines are functionally correlated evidencing a putative anti-inflammatory role for the selenite.