Studying the effects of several heat-inactivated bacteria on colon and breast cancer cells

Abstract

A great number of researches over the last years are allocated to know cancer reasons, prevention and treatment strategies. Bacterial infections are one of the promoting factors in cancer development. The present study was carried out to study effects of heat-killed bacteria on cancer cell lines MCF7 and HT-29. To this purpose, four bacterial strains including Salmonella typhi, Staphylococcus epidermidis, Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa were assayed. Thermal inactivation method was used to kill the bacteria and preserve the bacterial surface proteins unchangeable. The concentrations of 0.01, 0.1, 0.5 and 1 mg/ml of inactivated bacteria were prepared to evaluate the effects of heat-inactivated bacterial solutions on MCF7 and HT-29 cell lines. MTT assay was used to measure the cell viability of cancer cells treated with different concentration of inactivated bacterial solutions.The MTT assay results after 48 hours showed that the heat-killed bacterial solutions were able to induce the proliferation of both cancer cell lines. In addition, the most cell viability in MCF-7 cell line was seen in samples treated with S. epidermidis, while in HT29 cells, the most one was seen in S. typhi treated samples. It was concluded that bacterial infections are cancer-deteriorating agents, and any species of bacteria is specific to certain cancerous tissue.