Preparation and characterization of renal cell peptides from fetal rats for their antitumor activity

Bioactive peptides with potent antitumor activity are attractive therapeutic agents. The present study aimed to prepare renal cell peptides (RCPs) from fetal rats to test their antitumor activities in vitro. Candidate peptides were characterized by capillary HPLC and MS and their bioactivity was predicted using PeptideRanker. The predicted top 10 bioactive peptides were synthesized and tested for their cytotoxicity against different types of tumor cells by cell counting kit-8 assays and their half maximal inhibitory concentration values were calculated. Protease-digested < 3 kDa protein products reduced the viability of Michigan Cancer Foundation (MCF)-7 cells in a dose-dependent manner. Functionally, many candidate peptides were predicted to have antitumor activity and the top ten peptides (RCPs 1-10) were synthesized. Interestingly, RCP1, 5 and 6 displayed preferable cytotoxicity against human cancer MCF-7, A549, HCT-116, Hela, HepG2 and SGC-7901 cells and their cytotoxicity was dose-dependent. RCPs prepared from fetal rats displayed potent cytotoxicity preferably against different types of cancer cells in vitro in a dose-dependent manner which may be valuable for the treatment of malignant tumors.