Non-Thermal Plasma Causes P53-Dependent Apoptosis in Human Colon Carcinoma Cells

Abstract

Non-thermal plasma (NTP) consists of a huge amount of biologically active particles, whereas its temperature is close to ambient. This combination allows one to use NTP as a perspective tool for solving different biomedical tasks, including antitumor therapy. The treatment of tumor cells with NTP caused dose-dependent effects, such as growth arrest and apoptosis. However, while the outcome of NTP treatment has been established, the molecular mechanisms of the interaction between NTP and eukaryotic cells have not been thoroughly studied thus far. In this work, the mechanisms and the type of death of human colon carcinoma HCT 116 cells upon application of non-thermal argon plasma were studied. The effect of NTP on the major stress-activated protein p53 was investigated. The results demonstrate that the viability of HCT116 cells upon plasma treatment is dependent on the functional p53 protein. NTP treatment caused an increase in the intracellular concentration of p53 and the induction of the p53-controlled regulon. The p53-dependent accumulation of active proapoptotic caspase-3 was shown in NTP-treated cells. The study was the first to demonstrate that treatment of human colon carcinoma cells with NTP results in p53-dependent apoptosis. The results obtained contribute to our understanding of the applicability of NTP in antitumor therapy.

Low-temperature plasma-induced antiproliferative effects on multi-cellular tumor spheroids

“…Thus, our results obtained on 3D spheroids are in agreement with the literature showing that direct exposure to air plasma generated from an anodic nozzle [12] or dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) setup with a floating electrode [11] results in cell apoptosis. However, it is important to note that we used a remote helium plasma jet delivering lower deposited energy in comparison, for instance, to the DBD setup with a floating electrode already used for in vitro cell exposure but with the analysis in a 2D configuration [11,27]. Furthermore, our results also demonstrate that the DNA damaging effect and the subsequent cell death and growth inhibitory effects are regionalized when helium plasma is applied on a 3D microtumor.…”

“…Obviously, such ROS are generated in the media through the interactions of the gaseous low-temperature plasma with such liquid media. Following partial information in the literature [11,27], the ROS generated in the media can be, for instance, hydrogen peroxide (H 2 O 2 ), superoxide (O 2 − ), nitrogen oxides with other long-lived excited species and also atomic oxygen, as shown from the emission spectroscopy in section 2.3.…”

“…The reader can find more exhaustive lists of references on these biomedical applications (for example, in [6][7][8]) and also on plasma-induced anti-tumor effects that are evocated, hereafter, in the light of a few examples of the literature.Indeed nowadays, there is a growing interest on research works devoted to the effect of low-temperature plasmas at atmospheric pressure on cancer cells, both in vitro and in vivo. Recent studies have shown, more particularly, a plasma-induced cell cycle arrest and activation of apoptosis in glioma and colorectal carcinoma HCT116 colon cancer cells [9,10], an activation of p53-dependent cell death in plasma-exposed HCT116 [11], and a mitochondriamediated apoptosis in the case of human cervical cancer HeLa cells [12]. It has also been suggested that the plasma effect could eradicate lung and/or murine melanoma cancer cells with reduced damaging effects on normal or fibroblast cells [13,14].…”

Non-thermal gas plasma-induced endoplasmic reticulum stress mediates apoptosis in human colon cancer cells

“…Therefore, novel non-chemical strategies for treating colorectal cancer are urgently needed. NTGP has been characterized in various clinical applications as a promising tool for wound healing (27), plasma sterilization (28), blood coagulation (29), cell detachment (30), induction of apoptosis (31), and cancer therapy (32). Therefore, we investigated whether NTGP induces apoptosis in SNUC5 human colon carcinoma cells by generating ER stress.…”

The Effects of the Low Temperature Argon Plasma on Stem Cells Proliferation and Regeneration in Planarians

“…The selective inhibition of the proliferative activity and the reduction of their carcinogenic properties in several malignant cell lines after its exposure to the cold plasma has been described recently . Due to the higher resistance of non transforming (normal) cells comparing to the cancer cells in response to the damaging factors of the plasma irradiation, the use of the low‐temperature gas plasma in the therapy of the oncology diseases has been proposed by some authors …”