Comparison of the Anti-Tumor Effect of Conditioned Media of Tonsil-Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells on A549 and PANC-1 Cancer Cell Lines

Abstract Background Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are the apple of the eye of cancer studies. It was indicated that the secreted factors, especially released by MSCs, have tumoral and anti-tumoral effects on tumor progression. MSCs obtained from different sources show different anti-tumoral effects. At the same time, MSCs originating from the same source also show different tumoral effects in different cancer cells. Here, we compared the anti-tumor effects of soluble factors secreted from MSCs derived from the palatine tonsil (T-MSC) as a new source of MSC on cancer cell lines A549 and PANC-1. Methods and Results Conditioned medium (CM) was obtained from T-MSCs that were successfully isolated from palatine tonsil tissue and characterized, and the cytotoxic effect of CM on the growth of A549 and PANC-1 at different concentrations was demonstrated by MTT analysis. In addition, the apoptotic effect of T-MSC-CM treatment was evaluated on cancer cells using Annexin-V/PI detection method by flow cytometry. Cell cycle arrest in cancer cells was analyzed by flow cytometry using propidium iodide (PI). As a result, we demonstrated that T-MSC-CM treatment significantly decreased the viability of A549 and PANC-1 cell lines in a dose dependent manner post 48 hours. Treatment of CM also differentially induced apoptosis on A549 and PANC-1 cells and caused G2/M arrest in cells. Conclusions In the light of these findings, our study is the first to show that T-MSC-CM has antitumor effect by stimulating apoptosis at different rates on A549 and PANC-1 cells, and has a cell-free cellular therapeutic potential.