Paclitaxel is a widely used microtubule drug and cancer medicine. Here we report that by short exposure to paclitaxel at a low dose, multipolar spindles were induced in mitotic cells without centrosome amplification. Both TPX2 depletion and Aurora-A overexpression antagonized the multipolarity. Live cell imaging showed that some paclitaxel-treated cells accomplished multipolar cell division and a portion of the daughter cells went on to the next round of mitosis. The surviving cells grew into clones with varied genome content. The results indicated that an aneuploidy population could be induced by short exposure to paclitaxel at a low dose, implicating potential side effects of paclitaxel.
BIAN MingLei1, FU JingYan1, YAN Yan1, CHEN Qiang1, YANG Chao2, SHI QingHua2,JIANG Qing1 & ZHANG ChuanMao1 1MOE Key Laboratory of Cell Proliferation and Differentiation and the State Key Laboratory of Bio-membrane and Membrane Bio-engineering, College of Life Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
