The effects of bleomycin on trail receptors in testis cancer cell line

Testicular cancer is the most common solid tumor in young men. Although most patients are highly curable, a subset of patients have a grim prognosis. Bleomycin is an antitumor antibiotic that is used for the treatment of several malignancies, including testicular, esophagus, cervix carcinomas, Hodgkin?s and non-Hodgkin?s lymphomas, and squamous cell carcinomas of the head and neck. Tumor necrosis factor-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL), also known as Apo-2 ligand, is a proapoptotic cytokine that is capable of inducing apoptosis in a wide variety of cancer cells. Studies showed that, the combination of TRAIL with chemotherapeutics such as doxorubicin, 5-fluorouracil, etoposide, irinotecan (CPT-11), cisplatin and camptothecin had significantly enhanced TRAIL-mediated apoptosis in a variety of human tumour cell lines. The molecular basis for sensitization of tumour cells to TRAIL by chemotherapeutics may involve upregulation of TRAIL-R1/DR4 and TRAIL-R2/DR5, downregulation of the antiapoptotic molecules Bcl-2, Bcl-xL or c-FLIP or upregulation of proapoptotic molecules including Bak, caspases or FADD. In this study, we investigated the effect of bleomycin and TRAIL combination on apoptosis and also the effect of bleomycin on TRAIL receptors in testis cancer cell line. We used caspase-3 assay to assess the effect of TRAIL and bleomycin combination on apoptosis. The effect of bleomycin on TRAIL receptors in testis cancer cell lines was investigated using flow cytometry.