Objective/ Background:
Cancer is still the most common cause of morbidity in world and new powerful anticancer agents without severe side effects from natural sources is important.
Methods:
The evaluation of cytotoxicity and apoptosis induction was carried out in MCF-7,HeLa and Saos-2 as cancerous cell lines with different histological origin and human fibroblast served as control normal cell. The cells were treated with different concentrations of chitosan and the cytotoxicity was determined using MTT assay after 24, 48 and 72 h .The mode of death was evaluated by flow cytometry .
Results:
While both types of chitosan showed significant concentration-dependently cytotoxic effects against the three cancerous cell lines, fibroblast cells showed somehow more compatibility with chitosan. On the other hand, there were no significant differences between LMWC and HMWC cytotoxicity in all cell lines. The flow cytometry results showed the apoptosis pattern of death more in Saos-2 and HeLa while necrosis was more observable with MCF7. Also higher viability with both types of chitosan was seen in fibroblast as normal cells
Conclusion:
Chitosan shows anticancerous effect against 3 cancerous cell lines, while it is compatible with normal diploid fibroblast cells. Furthermore, it seems that the molecular weight of chitosan does not affect its anticancerous property.