Affiliations 

  • 1 Institute of Biological Science (Genetics and Molecular Biology), Faculty of Science, University of Malaya, 50603, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
  • 2 Department of Biotechnology, Faculty of Applied Sciences, UCSI University, 56000, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
  • 3 Pathogen Biology Laboratory, Department of Biotechnology, School of Life Sciences, University of Hyderabad, Professor C.R. Rao Road, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh 500046, India
Sci Rep, 2016;6:19833.
PMID: 26817684 DOI: 10.1038/srep19833

Abstract

Mycobacterium indicus pranii (MIP) is a non-pathogenic mycobacterium, which has been tested on several cancer types like lung and bladder where tumour regression and complete recovery was observed. In discovering the potential cytotoxic elements, a preliminary test was carried out using four different fractions consisting of live bacteria, culture supernatant, heat killed bacteria and heat killed culture supernatant of MIP against two human cancer cells A549 and CaSki by 3-(4,5-dimethyl thiazol)-2,5-diphenyl tetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay. Apoptosis was investigated in MCF-7 and ORL-115 cancer cells by poly-(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) and DNA fragmentation assays. Among four MIP fractions, only heat killed MIP fraction (HKB) showed significant cytotoxicity in various cancer cells with inhibitory concentration, IC50 in the range 5.6-35.0 μl/(1.0 × 10(6) MIP cells/ml), while cytotoxicity effects were not observed in the remaining fractions. HKB did not show cytotoxic effects on non-cancerous cells contrary to cancerous cells, suggesting its safe usage and ability to differentially recognize between these cells. Evaluation on PARP assay further suggested that cytotoxicity in cancer cells were potentially induced via caspase-mediated apoptosis. The cytotoxic and apoptotic effects of MIP HKB have indicated that this fraction can be a good candidate to further identify effective anti-cancer agents.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.