Non-thermal Plasma Causes p53-Dependent Apoptosis in Human Colon Carcinoma Cells

Non-thermal plasma (NTP) consists of a huge amount of biologically active particles, whereas its temperature is close to ambient. This combination allows one to use NTP as a perspective tool for solving different biomedical tasks, including antitumor therapy. The treatment of tumor cells with NTP caused dose-dependent effects, such as growth arrest and apoptosis. However, while the outcome of NTP treatment has been established, the molecular mechanisms of the interaction between NTP and eukaryotic cells have not been thoroughly studied thus far. In this work, the mechanisms and the type of death of human colon carcinoma HCT 116 cells upon application of non-thermal argon plasma were studied. The effect of NTP on the major stress-activated protein p53 was investigated. The results demonstrate that the viability of HCT116 cells upon plasma treatment is dependent on the functional p53 protein. NTP treatment caused an increase in the intracellular concentration of p53 and the induction of the p53-controlled regulon. The p53-dependent accumulation of active proapoptotic caspase-3 was shown in NTP-treated cells. The study was the first to demonstrate that treatment of human colon carcinoma cells with NTP results in p53-dependent apoptosis. The results obtained contribute to our understanding of the applicability of NTP in antitumor therapy.