Abstract
Phaseolus acutifolius (Tepary bean) lectins have been studied as cytotoxic molecules on colon cancer cells. The toxicological profile of a Tepary bean lectin fraction (TBLF) has shown low toxicity in experimental animals; exhibiting anti-nutritional effects such as a reduction in body weight gain and a decrease in food intake when using a dose of 50 mg/kg on alternate days for six weeks. Taking this information into account, the focus of this work was to evaluate the effect of the TBLF on colon cancer using 1,2-dimethylhydrazine (DMH) or azoxy-methane/dextran sodium sulfate (AOM/DSS) as colon cancer inductors. Rats were treated with DMH or AOM/DSS and then administered with TBFL (50 mg/kg) for six weeks. TBLF significantly decreased early tumorigenesis triggered by DMH by 70%, but without any evidence of an apoptotic effect. In an independent experiment, AOM/DSS was used to generate aberrant cryptic foci, which decreased by 50% after TBLF treatment. TBLF exhibited antiproliferative and proapoptotic effects related to a decrease of the signal transduction pathway protein Akt in its activated form and an increase of caspase 3 activity, but not to p53 activation. Further studies will deepen our knowledge of specific apoptosis pathways and cellular stress processes such as oxidative damage.
Highlights
Plant lectins are proteins that are able to bind to free or cell membrane carbohydrates, showing a high specificity for the recognition of surface glycosylations
We showed that protein inhibitors from Tepary beans did not exhibit cytotoxic effects but the Tepary bean lectin fraction (TBLF) is able to induce cell death in a differential manner on different cancer cells [11]
We used only the significant image parameters to determine that lectins are the molecules mainly responsible for the cytotoxic effect since non-lectin protein (NLP) exhibited a low cytotoxicity when compared with the TBLF (Figure 1C)
Summary
Plant lectins are proteins that are able to bind to free or cell membrane carbohydrates, showing a high specificity for the recognition of surface glycosylations. Given these properties, they have been used for several disease diagnoses and as potential therapeutic agents, including against cancer [1,2,3]. The wide-range recognition ability of lectins is related to their specificity for membrane carbohydrates, it is difficult to generalize the effects of these molecules [4,5]. Changes in glycocalix are related to cancer progression due to their relationship with cell migration, invasion, evasion of the immune system, and metastasis [10,11,12,13], lectins have been widely studied for their anticancer effects [14], cell proliferation [15,16,17,18], and the increase in cell death by apoptosis and autophagy [12,13]
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