In Vitro Assessment of Bee Venom Effects on Matrix Metalloproteinase Activity and Interferon Production

Controversial immunomodulatory properties of bee venom (bv) have provided anappropriate field for more investigation. the aim of present research was to verify theeffects of honeybee venom on matrix metalloproteinase activity and interferonproduction as well as cell proliferation in monocyte and fibroblast cell lines.the monocyte and fibroblast cell lines (k562, ht-i080, wehi-164) were used inorder to assess proliferative response, interferon-l production and matrixmetalloproteinase-2 (mmp-2) activity. australian bv (abv) and iranian bv (mv)preparations at concentrations of 0.025, 0.05, 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5, and 1ug/ml wereadded to each overnight cultured cells. in time course study, cells were treated eachwith abv and mv. in all cases supernatants were collected 24 hours after treatment.a sample of the each medium was used for zymography and interferons assay. nontreatedcells were used as controls.the production of ifn-a and ifn-p in supernatant of cell cultures was assessedusing enzyme linked immunoassay procedure. mmp-2 activity, as an inflammatoryindex, was evaluated using zymoanalysis method.the results of this study showed that, there were no significant difference betweentwo sources of honey bee venoms when they were added to an identical cell line,whereas, the responses of various cell lines against bee venom were different. theincreasing amounts of bee venom to human monocyte cell line (k562) revealed asignificant increase in proliferative response. our findings showed that the bee venomhad no influence on ifn-a production in cell culture media, whereas, adding the bv tok562 cell line could significantly increase the production level ofifn-p only on day 8post-treatment. in addition the effect of bee venom on mmp-2' activity in both cellculture media, wehi-164 and k562 was similar. the stimulatory effect of bee venomon mmp-2 activity occurred at low doses. in contrast, its inhibitory effect was seen athigh concentrations. .it is concluded that, honeybee venom affects on mmp-2 activity and interferon betaproduction as well as cell proliferation in a time and dose-dependent manner.