Adaptation of the human adenocarcinoma lung cancer cells to the nitric oxide environment and investigation of the biological alterations at molecular level

Cancer has become one of the most important public health problem recently and ranks second after cardiovascular disease among the fatal cases.Lung cancer incidence and deaths is at the first placecompared to other cancer types. The free radical nitric oxide (NO•) is known to have an important role in the biology of human cancers. But, it is not clear how large amounts of nitric oxide affects cancer prolifelation and progress.An in vitro model system has developed to study effects of nitric oxcide on lung cancer.Human lung adenicarcinom A549 cells were adaptively cultured in increasing concentrations of nitric oxide and adaptation process has completed successfully.There was not any morphological differences between the cells were adapted to the high nitric oxide (HNO) environment and cells did not undergo adaptation process (parent cells). When the HNO and parents cells exposed to high levels of nitric oxide and an oxygen-based free radical hydrogen peroxide, HNO cells showed great resistances than parent cells to these free radical sources. These adaped cell lines can serve as a model system to use in future experiments designed to better understand the role of the nitric oxide on lung cancer.