The effects of staphylococcal bacteriophage lysates on cancer cells in vitro

Abstract

Bacteriophages constitute a serious alternative to antibiotic therapy of bacterial infections. They are also extremely numerous entities: phages can be found in almost all places on Earth and are constantly present in human and animal bodies. Observations of the effect of therapeutic staphylococcal phages and their bacterial hosts on melanoma migration in vitro are reported in this article. Together with bacteriophage preparations, disrupted Staphylococci (host strains) were investigated to compare the effects of bacteria with those of bacteriophages. Migration was decreased by all the investigated preparations in various ways and this was rather due to the activity of the bacterial components. Importantly, none of the investigated bacteriophage or bacterial preparations induced an increase in the migration activity of melanoma cells, which is important from the perspective of the therapeutic use of phage lysates. The possible presence of staphylococcal enterotoxins in the therapeutic bacteriophage preparations was also verified. All the studied therapeutic bacteriophage preparations were negative for the Staphylococcal enterotoxins A, B, C, D, and E (i.e., the enterotoxin content was less than 0.2-0.5 ng/ml).