anticancer effect of bovine lactoferrin on human esophagus cancer cell line

Background: lactoferrin (lf) is a glycoprotein, a member of the transferrin family.from ten known mechanisms of anticancer chemoperotecive compounds, lf alone, has six of these functions and inhibits cancer. in this study, the effect of lactoferrin purified from bovine colostrum was studied as an anticancer agent on esophageal cancer cell line.materials and methods: bovine colostrum were collected immediately after giving birth. at first, the fat, casein, and some of the milk proteins were removed. then, lactoferrin was purified using cmsephadexc50 cation exchange chromatography by fplc system. purified lactoferrin with 80 kda molecular weight and 2mg/ml concentration was obtained. esophageal cancer cell line kyse30 and normal cell line hek were cultured. after appropriate confluency, different concentrations of lf were added to kyse30 and hek for 20 h and its anticancer effect was evaluated by mtt and flow cytometric methods. the maximum concentration inhibitory effect was studied at different times using mtt method.results: mtt test determined that 500 µg/ml of lactoferrin reduced cell viability in esophageal cancer cell lines kyse by 53% and 80% after 20 and 62 hours, respectively, but had no effect on normal cells. also, flow cytometric analysis determined that lactoferrin was able to induce apoptosis in kyse30 cell line.conclusion: the isolated lactoferrin from bovine milk showed inhibitory effect on esophageal cancer cell line whereas; it did not have any significant effect on normal cells.