Abstract
The lectins are non-immune origin carbohydrate-binding proteins. Plant's lectins are distributed in many species of medicinal plants, family Fabaceae. In this study the safety usage pattern of wild Pisum fulvum lectin was evaluated on different mammalian noncancerous cell types and the anticancer activity was examined on different cancer human cell lines: colorectal adenocarcinoma (Caco-2), hepatocellular carcinoma (HepG2), breast cancer cells (MCF7) and laryngeal carcinoma (Hep-2 cells). Moreover, both morphological and molecular evidence of apoptosis have been detected using both acridine orange/ethidium bromide (AO/EB) stain and RT-qPCR. The results revealed that IC50 of the wild lectin on the noncancerous cells ranged from 19.7 to 2.4 mu g protein/mL. In addition, lectin was more potent against HepG2 cells than the other used cells, with inhibition percentages ranged from 68.45 to 90.98 and with cancer cell selectivity index ranged 3.5 to 28.14. The treatment showed 67.6% inhibition of BrdU incorporation in the proliferated hepatocellular carcinoma cells. Furthermore, HepG2-lectin treated cells showed obvious nuclear condensation after 48 h of treatment with ability to down-regulate the expression of BCL2 and BAX and to up-regulate the expression of Ikab gene. The results obtained in this research work clearly indicated the Pisum fulvum lectin could be a promising potential anticancer agent.