Abstract

Cancer is one of the most causes of death all over the world, although improvements in its treatment and recognition. Due to the limitations of common anticancer methods, including surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy, attention has been drawn to other anti-cancer compounds, especially natural peptides such as bacteriocins. In this study, we used a combination of two bacteriocins, colicin E1 and enterocin A, against AGS gastric cancer cell lines. In order to evaluate anticancer properties of fusion peptide, we applied MTT assay, real-time PCR, and flow cytometry tests. This is the first report to show the cell growth inhibitory activity of the enterocin A in combination with colicin E1 against AGS human cancer cells. The results of this study showed that this fusion peptide at a concentration of 60.4 mu g/mL and 24 h was able to kill half of the tested cancer cells, and treatment of the cells with this concentration increased the expression of bax and caspase 3 genes and reduced the expression of bacl-2 in 24 h. Flow cytometry analysis of annexin V-FITC/propidium iodide results also showed that our peptide was able to induce apoptosis in treated cells compared with control. Taken together, enterocin A-colicin E1 (ent A-col E1) can be considered as a good candidate for anticancer therapies.