Protein extracts from regenerating lizard tail show an inhibitory effect on human cancer cells cultivated in-vitro

Background: accumulating evidence indicates that during tail regeneration in lizards the initial stage of regenerative blastema is a tumor-like proliferative outgrowth that rapidly elongates into a new tail composed of fully differentiated tissues. Both oncogenes and tumor-suppressors are expressed during regeneration, and it has been hypothesized that an efficient control of cell proliferation avoids that the blastema is turned into a tumor outgrowth. Methods: in order to determine whether functional tumor-suppressors are present in the growing blastema we have utilized protein extracts collected from early regenerating tails of 3-5 mm that have been tested for a potential anti-tumor effect on in-vitro culture by using cancer cell lines from human mammary gland (MDA-MB-231) and prostate cancer (DU145).Results: at specific dilutions, the extract determines a reduction of viability in cancer cells after 2-4 days of culture, as supported by statistical and morphological analyses. While control cells appear viable, treated cells result damaged and produce an intense cytoplasmic granulation and degeneration.Conclusions: this negative effect on cell viability and proliferation is absent using tissues from the original tail supporting the hypothesis that only regenerating tissues synthesize tumor-suppressor molecules. The study suggests that the regenerating tail of lizard at the stages here selected contains some molecules that determine inhibition of cell viability on the cancer cells analyzed.& COPY; 2023 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.