Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 13, 2026
Pre-Conditioning the Airways of Mice with Bleomycin Increases the Efficiency of Orthotopic Lung Cancer Cell Engraftment
Published on: June 28, 2018
Cardiac hormones eliminate some human squamous lung carcinomas in athymic mice
A Lenz1, Y Sun, E J Eichelbaum
1University of South Florida Cardiac Hormone Center and James A. Haley Veterans Medical Center, Tampa, FL, USA.
Background:
Four cardiac hormones synthesized by the same gene, i.e. atrial natriuretic peptide, vessel dilator, long acting natriuretic peptide and kaliuretic peptide, have anticancer effects in vitro.
Materials And Methods:
These cardiac hormones were infused subcutaneously for 28 days with weekly fresh hormones at 0.3 nM kg(-1) body weight in athymic mice bearing human squamous cell carcinomas.
Results:
Vessel dilator, atrial natriuretic peptide and kaliuretic peptide each eliminated one in six (17%) of the human squamous cell lung carcinomas. Long-acting natriuretic peptide, although it did not eliminate any of the human squamous cell lung carcinomas did decrease the volume of one carcinoma to only 2% (P < 0.0001) of the untreated carcinomas. The squamous cell lung carcinomas that were not eliminated, with the exception of the one LANP-treated tumour that decreased to only 2% of the volume of the untreated cancers, grew rapidly but their growth velocity compared to controls decreased by 76%, 40%, 38% and 25% in the vessel dilator, atrial natriuretic peptide, kaliuretic peptide and long-acting natriuretic peptide groups respectively (P < 0.05).
Conclusions:
Three of four cardiac hormones synthesized by the atrial natriuretic peptide gene can eliminate human squamous cell lung carcinomas in athymic mice when treated subcutaneously for 4 weeks. The 4th cardiac hormone, i.e. long-acting natriuretic peptide, decreased the volume of one squamous cell lung carcinoma to 2% of that of untreated animals, suggesting that it, too, has beneficial effects on squamous cell lung cancers.
