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Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most common malignant primary brain tumor, and GBM patients have a poor overall prognosis. CDC20 expression is increased in a variety of tumors and associated with temozolomide (TMZ) resistance in glioma cells. Apcin specifically binds to CDC20 to inhibit APC/C-CDC20 interaction and exhibits antitumor properties. The purpose of this article was to assess whether apcin inhibits tumor growth in glioma cell lines and increases the sensitivity of GBM to TMZ. In this study, a series of biochemical assays, such as Cell Counting Kit-8 (CCK-8), wound healing, apoptosis and colony formation assays, were performed to determine the antitumor properties of apcin in glioma cells. GBM cell apoptosis was detected by western blotting analysis of related proteins. Apcin increased the sensitivity of glioma to TMZ, as confirmed by CCK-8 and western blotting analysis. The results showed that apcin significantly inhibited the proliferation of glioma cells in a time- and dose-dependent manner. The migration decreased with increasing apcin concentrations. Increased Bim expression indicated that apcin promotes the apoptosis of glioma cells. Furthermore, apcin improved glioma sensitivity to TMZ. The results showed that apcin can effectively inhibit GBM growth and improve TMZ sensitivity. Apcin has the potential to treat GBM and is expected to provide new ideas for individualized treatment.

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the fourth most common carcinoma with an increasing incidence in China [1]. In addition, comparing to solitary tumors, synchronous colorectal carcinoma (synchronous CRC) is a rare type of colorectal malignancy, which is defined as more than one primary colorectal carcinoma detected in one patient at the time of initial presentation [2]. The range of prevalence is 1.1%–8.1% of all colorectal cancers [3]. Synchronous CRC is often seen in males, and a previous large-scale study determined the male/female ratio as 1.85 [4]. The other known higher risk factors include inflammatory bowel diseases, Lynch syndrome, familial adenomatous polyposis, and adenomas/hyperplasic polyposis [5–8]. Moreover, the chromosomal instability, microsatellite instability (MSI), and gene methylation account for various predisposing lesions or factors for synchronous CRC [9]. Although synchronous CRC is identified as a significant entity at the clinical and molecular level, the clinical and pathological features and prognosis are yet controversial [5]. In addition, the results of previous studies which evaluated the prognostic significance of synchronous CRC are conflicting. Thus, the common consensus is reached on the occurrence of synchronous CRC as an independent predictive factor of survival as compared to solitary CRC after the operation [5,10,11]; the expected long-term survival rates of patients with synchronous CRC are yet controversial [12]. The present study aimed to compare the various clinicopathological features and short-term/long-term cancer-specific outcomes between synchronous and solitary CRC by a matched pair analysis with stratification based on age, sex, American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) class, BMI, cancer grade, tumor location, and tumor stage.