Effect of He Plasma Jet Versus Surface Plasma on the Metabolites of Acute Myeloid Leukemia Cells.

Dehui Xu,Hailan Chen,Michael G Kong,Dingxin Liu,Ning Ning,Wenjie Xia,Yujing Xu

doi:10.3389/fonc.2021.552480

Dehui Xu, Hailan Chen + Show 5 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fonc.2021.552480

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Abstract

Cold atmospheric plasma, including plasma jet and surface plasma, can promote the apoptosis of cancer cells without causing significant damage to surrounding normal cells, which was hopeful to be applied to the clinical cancer therapy. However, experimental plasma devices used directly to clinical experiments has challenges in technology and methods, especially the difference in killing tumor cells efficiency of these two common plasma sources. Therefore, it is great necessity to explore the differences in treating tumors between different plasma sources. This paper achieved good killing efficiency by using two kinds of cold atmospheric plasma generating devices, namely plasma jet and surface plasma treatment along acute myeloid leukemia (AML). The results showed that the He plasma jet kills leukemia cells more efficiently than surface plasma with the same voltage and frequency and the same time. By GC-TOFMS and metabolomics analysis, this paper compared the differential metabolites of leukemia cells treated by two plasma devices and the key metabolic pathways closely related to differential metabolites. Simultaneously, we found alanine, aspartate and glutamate metabolism was most correlated with a key differential metabolite, glutamine. It was found that the glutaminase activity of He plasma jet group was lower than that of surface plasma group, which might be a reason for He plasma jet group to kill tumor cells better. It was also worth noting that relative quantity of glucose metabolites of plasma jet treatment group was lower than that of surface plasma treatment group. This study provides the basis for clinical trials for future.

Highlights

Cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) is a groundbreaking technique that overcomes the limits of thermal plasma and reduces the gas temperature to room temperature so that the cold plasma can be used directly to handle biological tissue [1,2,3]
By the bioinformatics analysis of metabolites and metabolic pathways, the metabolites and metabolic pathways related with differential metabolites were screened out, and the reasons for the different effect in leukemia cells apoptosis between the two plasma generating devices were analyzed at the metabolism level
The results again demonstrated that inhibition of glutamine metabolism was a metabolic abnormality produced by plasma treatment, which was a vital cause of tumor cell death

Summary

Introduction

Cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) is a groundbreaking technique that overcomes the limits of thermal plasma and reduces the gas temperature to room temperature so that the cold plasma can be used directly to handle biological tissue [1,2,3]. The direct application of plasma has double challenges in technology and method, especially the difference in the killing effect of different types of plasma sources on tumor cells. It is of great significance to explore the differences in the effects of different plasma sources on tumor treatment. Glutamine metabolism provides a large amount of nutrients for tumor cells growth and proliferation, so after plasma treatment, glutamine metabolism was inhibited to eventually lead to leukemia cells apoptosis [27]. By the bioinformatics analysis of metabolites and metabolic pathways, the metabolites and metabolic pathways related with differential metabolites were screened out, and the reasons for the different effect in leukemia cells apoptosis between the two plasma generating devices were analyzed at the metabolism level

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Conclusion