Madhura Satish Bhave
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Scientific Tracks Abstracts: Oncol Cancer Case Rep
Traditional cancer treatments like chemotherapy and radiation therapy continue to have limited efficacy due to phenomena like tumor hypoxia and multi-drug resistance. Bacterial cancer therapy has the potential to overcome these problems, through the use of anaerobic spores of bacteria such as the proteolytic Clostridium sporogenes. However, the use of spores or live bacteria comes with the risk of toxicity and infection. To circumvent these issues, the anti-cancer effect of heat-inactivated C. sporogenes bacteria (IB) and its secreted bacterial proteins, known as Conditioned Media (CM) was investigated. These non-viable bacterial derivatives were administered to CT26 and HCT116 colorectal cancer cells in a 2-Dimensional (2D) and a 3-Dimensional (3D) platform. IB significantly inhibited cell proliferation of CT26 in a dose-dependent manner to 6.3% of the control in 72 hours for the 2D monolayer culture. In the 3D spheroid culture, cell proliferation of HCT116 spheroids notably dropped to 26.2%. Similarly the CM also remarkably reduced the cell-proliferation of the CT26 cells to 2.4% and 20% in the 2D and 3D models, respectively. Results suggest that physical interaction between the IB and the cancer cells lead to their inhibition, while the secreted proteins present in CM were responsible for anti-cancer effect observed. The bacterial derivatives exhibited strong inhibitive effects on colorectal cancer cells, indicating that there is a safer alternative to the use of spores and live bacteria. With further research, these non-viable derivatives could be developed as an alternative or adjunct to traditional cancer treatments.
Madhura is currently pursuing her PhD at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. She completed her Bachelor of Engineering in Bioengineering from NTU where her final year honours thesis was on the subject of Bacterial Cancer Therapy. She was on the Dean’s List for the academic year of 2014/2015. Her work has been published in the Scientific Reports journal, by the Nature Publishing Group.
Email: madhuras001@e.ntu.edu.sg