The preliminary effect of Manuka honey on cancer stem-like cells from colonspheres

Honey has always been used not only as a food/sweetener but also as a medicine since ancient times. The quality and composition depend on many factors, including the botanical origin, the environmental, processing and storage conditions^[1]. The nutritional characteristics and the preventive/therapeutic effect of honey are due to its composition: it contains over 180 different types of compounds including water, carbohydrates, enzymes, amino acids, minerals, vitamins and different phytochemicals^[2] . Among the different effects on health, those most studied in the scientific literature are its antibacterial activity^[3] and the antioxidant capacity^[4]. In recent years the potential anticancer effect of honey, in several tumor cell lines, has also been a reason of study^[5]. Among different types of honey, Manuka, has shown a high anticancer effect, especially in colon cancer cells (LoVo and HCT-116)^[6,7] while it is little known on its effect in cancer stem cells' (CSCs; a rare population of cells within the tumor mass that seem to be responsible for the tumor onset) chemoresistance and the presence of relapse ^[8]. Therefore, the effect of Manuka honey on CSCs-like was evaluated. In general, CSCs-like were enriched from the monolayer population of HCT-116 through the in vitro sphere forming assay^[9]. This honey was able to modify the morphological parameters of the spheroids, reducing the size and volume of the entire culture. The treatment of CSCs-like enriched colonospheres with Manuka honey also led to an intracellular accumulation of ROS and induction of apoptosis. Furthermore, through real-time PCR, down-regulation of ABCG2 gene expression (one of the efflux pumps closely associated with the chemoresistance phenotype) was observed.

References

1. DOI: 10.1016/j.lwt.2017.08.079
2. DOI: 10.3390/molecules23092322
3. DOI: 10.1155/2019/2464507
4. DOI: 10.1016/j.jff.2016.05.008
5. DOI: 10.1016/j.clnu.2018.12.019
6. DOI: 10.1039/c8fo00164b
7. DOI: 10.1039/c8fo00165k
8. DOI: 10.1016/j.phrs.2018.08.006
9. DOI: 10.18632/oncotarget.6261