The inhibitory effect of human embryonic germ cells on ovarian cancer

Cancer cells share numerous characteristics with pluripotent stem cells which develop normally, contributing to the tumor cell plasticity. So we investigated the effect of human embryonic germ cells (hEGCs) on SKOV3 cells. We examined the efficacy of hEGCs through coculturing SKOV3 with hEGCs, detecting tunel apoptosis and caspase-9 activity by immunocytochemistry, and measuring the expression of AKT by real-time PCR and western blot. Further a xenograft model in SCID mouse to examine the effect of hEGCs on SKOV3 in vivo was used. Our results showed that there was a 1.5-fold growth reduction for SKOV3 in the coculture group. HEGCs induced apoptosis via caspase-9 activation and AKT downregulation in SKOV3. This tumor cell inhibition was demonstrated also in the used animal tumor model. Taken together, our observations demonstrated that the hEGCs could inhibit the growth of SKOV3 by inducing apoptosis by inhibiting AKT pathway. Key words: embryonic germ cells; ovarian cancer; apoptosis.