The therapeutic effects of vitamin C on lung cancer cells.

e18523 Background: In this in-vitro study, we determined the effects of vitamin C (Ascorbic acid), an essential vitamin, on two different lung cancer cell lines (H358 – Bronchioalveolar Carcinoma and A549 – Epithelial Lung carcinoma) and two normal lung cell lines as control groups (MRC5 – Human lung fibroblast tissue and NL20 – Lung epithelial cells). Methods: In the study, the four cell lines were treated with Vitamin C starting from 0.005 molar concentrations and serially diluted down 1:3 ratios to low nM concentrations. All experiments were carried out in a period of 4 weeks. The viability of the cell lines after the drug treatment was measured using a MTS cell proliferation assay. Results: The study was inconclusive since the viability of both normal and lung cells were equally affected under the experimental conditions except that the dosage of vitamin C that killed 50% of H358 was at a slightly lower concentration than the dosage of vitamin C that killed 50% of the normal lung cells. These results show that there is a possibility of an optimal dosage that will only harm cancerous cells in specific cancers and not on all cancers. Conclusions: These results were inconclusive; probably due to the fact that experimental conditions in this in-vitro study may not be appropriate to show the effects of Vitamin C on lung cancer cells. It is possible that lower dosages of vitamin C may still kill cancer cells selectively, and may also be more effective in cancers in ther tissues. Despite these drawbacks, in-vivo experiments in animal models with lung cancer may show the benefits of Vitamin C in combination with standard of care cancer drugs. Future experiments will examine combinations experiments in vitro and in animals to study the beneficial effects of Vitamin C.