Pre-clinical studies of honey-related synthetic peptides in malignancy control

Backgound: The challenge with malignancy control approaches, although of all traditional methods of treatment like surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, immunotherapy etc. makes more stress upon the scientific community to look for a solution for this challenge even far from the traditional ways. Methods: A growth inhibitory assay was performed. Samples of peptide A and peptide F, 5 mg each, were dissolved in 500 μL Dulbecco’s Phosphate-Buffered Saline to prepare the stock solution, which was added into the wells directly. A 1% trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) solution was used as the control. (a) Cells were placed into a 96-well assay plate at a density of 5000 and 10000 cells/well for adherent and suspension cell lines, respectively, with a 50 μL complete cell culture medium. (b) Stock solutions (10 μL) of the compounds were added into the wells. (c) For data analysis, 10 μL 1% TFA solution was used as control. (d) Complete medium of 40 μL was added into the wells to reach a total volume of 100 μL. (e) The plate was incubated at 37℃ for 72 hours. (f) CellTiter-Glo assay mix solution (50 μL) was added to each well and mixed gently at room temperature for 10 minutes; subsequently, the luminescence was read using PHERAstar Plus (Molecular Devices). Results: Apparent inhibitory effects of those peptides were noticed in 17 of 18 tumour cell lines. Similar effects were noted in an in vivo study using the U87MG tumour mouse model. Conclusion: This study has introduced new synthetic peptides derived from honey proteins, which may help in cancer control through direct apoptotic action not limited to only a certain tumour cell line. Patent: WO/2014/040605A1, US/2015/0291663A1, and CN105283198A.