Journal of Biotechnology & Biomaterials
Open Access

Abstract

Recently, some biosurfactants were proved to be suitable alternatives to synthetic medicines and may be used as effective theurapeutic agents, for example, certain trehalose lipids have been shown to possess properties of biomedical importance, since they can act as anticancer and immunomodulating agents.Trehalose lipids are glycolipid biosurfactants produced by most species belonging to the mycolates group such as Mycobacterium, Rhodoccoccus, Arthrobacter, Nocardiaand Gordonia. To date there are very few studies carried out on the potential use of trehalose lipid biosurfactants as anticancer agents.The aim of this study was to isolate and identify the chemical structure of a biosurfactant produced by a newly isolated Nocardiafarcinica strain BN26, and evaluate its in vitro antitumor activity on a panel of human cancer cell lines. Strain BN26 was found to produce glycolipid biosurfactant on n-hexadecane as the sole carbon source. The biosurfactant was purified using medium pressure liquid chromatography and characterized as trehalose lipid tetraester (THL) by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and mass spectrometry (MS). Subsequently, the cytotoxic effects of THL on cancer cell lines BV-173, KE-37 (SKW-3), HL-60, HL-60/DOX and JMSU-1 were evaluated by MTT assay. The results showed that THL caused concentration dependent cytotoxicity on all human tumor cell lines investigated.

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