Investigation of succinic acid for its anticancer activity on renal cancer cell lines

Renal cancers are the 14th most common cancer among all types of cancer. Mostly, it is observed that it develops resistance to chemotherapy and radiotherapy-derived treatment methods. For this reason, it is important to investigate new effective alternative treatment methods for renal cancer. Recently, several studies have shown that succinic acid plays a significant role via inducing apoptosis on different types of cancers. Succinic acid is an intermediate metabolite in the tricarboxylic acid cycle that plays a role in the production of ATP in living organisms. Because of its involvement in metabolism naturally, there is no known side effect on healthy cells. In our thesis, we aimed to determine/investigate the anticancer activity of succinic acid administration on renal cancer cell lines (CAKI-2 and ACHN). The percentage of vitality in the cells after succinic acid administration was measured by WST-1 Cytotoxicity Test, following this, apoptosis/ necrosis analyzes were performed by using Flow Cytometric Annexin V and Cell Death Detection ELISA methods. As we expected, the cytotoxic effect of succinic acid on healthy cells was not detected. However, the cytotoxic activity on CAKI-2 cells was determined/investigated as 89% and 91% for the concentrations of 25μM and 50μM, respectively, and the efficacy at the same doses on ACHN cells was 59% and 61%, respectively. In conclusion, in our research, the apoptotic activity of succinic acid on renal cancer cell lines was studied for the first time in our research and we obtained that it could be used as a potential anticancer agent. Key words: renal cell carcinoma, succinic acid, apoptosis, anticancer, cell culture.