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Bacillus subtilis supernatant improves the efficacy of radiation therapy in rat intestinal epithelial cells by upregulation of bax and caspase-3 genes

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Abstract

Background

Colorectal Cancer (CC) is among the most prevalent cancers in elderly persons. Radiotherapy is usually prescribed as CC develops, however, radiation beams indiscriminately affect normal cells. Previous studies nominated that probiotics and their metabolites can be used to minimize the side effects of radiotherapy. Hereby, the aim of this study was to investigate the probable correlation between cell-free supernatant of Bacillus subtilis and radiation response in normal and cancerous cell lines.

Methods and results

IEC-18 and SW-48 cells were treated with different concentrations of B. subtilis supernatant. To evaluate the effect of probiotic treatments under radiation and the normal situation, the cytotoxicity of the treatments was measured using the MTT method. The cell cycle status was analyzed by flow cytometry. The expression levels of Bax, Bcl-2, and Caspase 3 genes were also determined by real-time (RT) PCR. B. subtilis supernatant increased the viability of normal cells under radiation treatment, although this effect was not significant. 40% v/v of this mixture could amplify the lethal effect of radiation and decreased the viability of cancer cells. SW-48 cells that received 40% v/v of the supernatant had a significantly higher rate of apoptosis. Probiotic supernatant effectively induced the expression of proapoptotic Bax and Caspase 3 genes.

Conclusion

Presented results confirmed that the supernatant of B. subtilis can be supposed as a clue to improve the efficacy of radiation therapy in CC patients as it increased the sensitivity of cancerous cells and protected normal epithelial cells from detrimental effects of radiation.

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Acknowledgements

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Funding

This study was funded by Tehran University of Medical Sciences (TUMS).

Author information

Author notes

  1. Niloofar Nazari and Farshid Zandsalimi equally contributed to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Persian Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Science, Tehran, Iran

    Niloofar Nazari

  2. Department of Molecular Medicine, School of Advanced Technologies in Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

    Farshid Zandsalimi, Mansoreh Abdolhosseini, Mohammad Hossein Ghahremani & Elahe Motevaseli

  3. Department of Toxicology and Pharmacology, Faculty of Pharmacy, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

    Mohammad Hossein Ghahremani

  4. Sports Medicine Research Center, Neuroscience Institute, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

    Elahe Motevaseli

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  1. Niloofar Nazari
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Contributions

NN: Investigation; FZ: Investigation, Writing—Review and Editing, Visualization; MA: Writing—Original Draft, MHG: Supervision, Conceptualization; EM: Supervision, Project Administration. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Elahe Motevaseli.

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The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

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The presented study complies with all ethical considerations under the supervision of Tehran university of medical science (TUMS) ethical committee.

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Nazari, N., Zandsalimi, F., Abdolhosseini, M. et al. Bacillus subtilis supernatant improves the efficacy of radiation therapy in rat intestinal epithelial cells by upregulation of bax and caspase-3 genes. Mol Biol Rep 50, 7639–7647 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11033-023-08694-w

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