The Selective Effect of Plasma Activated Media on Cells

Abstract

Biomedical applications of low temperature plasma (LTP), particularly cancer treatment, have recently advanced significantly 1. Plasma-activated media (PAM) which are produced by exposing liquid culture media to LTP have shown adverse physiological effects on mammalian cells 1. In recent years more research has been done on the anti-tumor effects of PAM treatment on different tumors 2, 3. However, much less is known about the effects of PAM on non-cancerous cells. We report on the effects of PAM on the viability and morphological characteristics of non-cancerous epithelial cells. In a comparative study, we present the effects of PAM on the viability of cancerous cells. In this research, non-cancerous MDCK (Madin-Darby Canine Kidney) cells and SCaBER (from a bladder squamous cell carcinoma) cells were used. It was found that there is an optimum dose of PAM (LTP exposure time) to suppress viability of cancer cells significantly while inducing minimum damage to normal cells. Finally, molecular beacons were also employed to investigate the effects of direct LTP treatment on DNA. Molecular beacons are single strand DNA oligonucleotides which adopt a stem-and-loop shape. Our results indicate that plasma exposure causes dose-dependent DNA strand breaks in the molecular beacons.