Efficacy of electrical pulse mediated tomato lipophilic extract on human breast cancer cell.

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to study the effect of electrical pulse mediated tomato lipophilic extract (TLE) on human breast cancer MCF-7 and non-tumorigenic MCF-10A cells. MCF-7 and MCF-10A cells were treated with 50 μg/mL TLE and eight 100 μs electric pulses of different electric field intensities (800, 1000, and 1200 V/cm), and the viability was studied using real time MT assay at 24 h of treatment. In addition, we studied cell viability of both the cells at 0 h using trypan blue assay and the ability to form colonies of both cells using colony forming unit (CFU) assay for all the treatments. We also imaged the cells at 24 h using microscope. With 50 μg/mL TLE, the cell viability of MCF-7 and MCF-10A was same (84%). When the same concentration of TLE is combined with eight electrical pulses of 1200 V/cm, the cell viability of MCF-7 and MCF-10A was 2% and 87%, respectively. These results indicate that the effect of electrical pulses mediated TLE was higher on cancerous MCF-7 cells when compared to non-cancerous MCF-10A cells. The combination of electrical pulses with TLE is an effective strategy to selectively target cancer cells in the body.