{"doi":"10.20944/preprints202511.0870.v1","title":"The Anticancer Effect of Kaempferol Through Downregulation of CDKs and PD-L1 in Triple-Negative Breast Cancer Cells","abstract":"Background: Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is an aggressive subtype of breast cancer characterized by poor prognosis, high metastatic potential, and limited targeted therapies. Methods: This study evaluates the anticancer activity of kaempferol in two genetically and ethnically distinct TNBC models: MDA-MB-231 (Caucasian) and MDA-MB-468 (African American) cells, utilizing cell viability, cell proliferation, apoptosis, cell cycle arrest, qPCR, and Abby analysis assays. Results: Kaempferol inhibited TNBC cell viability and proliferation in a dose- and time-dependent manner, in both 2D monolayer and three-dimensional (3D) cell cultures, and induced apoptosis and S phase cycle arrest. This investigation demonstrated that kaempferol affects cancer cells by inhibiting CDK1, CDK4, CDK6, and CDK7 at both the gene and protein levels in MDA-MB-231 cells, and specifically CDK6 and CDK7 in MDA-MB-468 cells. It reduced expression of PD-L1, JAK1, STAT3, MUC-1, and NF-κB1 (p50), indicating that the underlying pathway of PD-L1 inhibition may involve targeting the JAK1/STAT3 pathway and downregulating MUC-1, while inhibiting NF-κB1 levels. Kaempferol also inhibited the overexpression of CCL2 and TGM2, which are responsible for the development of resistance to targeted therapies, such as anti-PD-L1 immunotherapy, in TNBC. Conclusion: Kaempferol acts as a multi-target modulator of CDKs and PD-L1-associated signaling in TNBC, extending prior reports of its antiproliferative and pro-apoptotic effects in MDA-MB-231 and, significantly, providing comparative evidence across MDA-MB-231 versus MDA-MB-468 models. Since the levels of PD-L1 have been previously shown to be regulated by CDKs, this study is the first to report the dual inhibitory effect of a flavonoid of natural origin on CDKs and PD-L1 levels in TNBC cells.","journal":"Preprints.org","year":2025,"id":559509,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":1,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9623,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":271110,"name":"Patricia Mendonca","orcid":"0000-0002-0116-2189","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1461333,"name":"Shubham D Mishra","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":271111,"name":"Karam F. A. Soliman","orcid":"0000-0002-0600-1085","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1059421,"name":"Sukhmandeep Kaur","orcid":"0000-0001-6005-9176","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":0,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:55:34.849815Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}