Tehran University Medical Journal

Background: Gastric cancer (GC) is one of the most common cancers worldwide and in Iran. Conventional therapies are surgery and chemotherapy. Current studies are evaluating natural compounds in inhibiting growth of cancer cell. In this study isolated peptide melittin with 26 amino acids from bee venom and its impact on the viability and proliferation of gastric cancer cells was investigated.
Methods: At first melittin was purified from honeybee venom using a reversed-phase high performance liquid chromatography (RP- HPLC) and C18 column. In order to investigate whether melittin, a 26 amino acids peptide which is the main components of honeybee venom, inhibits proliferation of human gastric adenocarcinoma cell line (AGS cells), MTT ((3-(4, 5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2, 5- diphenyltetrazolium bromide) assay was performed. Hemolytic assay carried out in order to confirm the biologic activity of the isolated melittin. AGS cells were plated in a 96-well plate and treated with serially diluted concentrations of melittin for 6 and 12 hours. The mortality of the cells was measured via MTT assay at 540 nm.
Results: The obtained chromatogram from RP-HPLC showed that melittin comprises 50% of the studied bee venom. SDS-PAGE analysis of melittin fraction confirmed purity of isolated melittin. Hemolytic activity assay indicates that isolated melittin shows a strong hemolytic activity (HD50=0.5). MTT assay showed that melittin strongly inhibits proliferation of gastric cancer cells at concentrations more than 2µg/ml. This inhibitory effect is dependent to melittin concentration and incubation time.
Conclusion: This study provides evidence that melittin inhibits proliferation of the gastric cancer cells. Results showed that isolated melittin from honey bee venom have cytotoxic effect on AGS cell line with a trend of increasing cytotoxicity with increasing concentration and incubation time.