Abstract
It is recognized that minor dietary components polyphenols have anticancer effects on digestive tract, lung, leukemia, and other cancers, while polyphenols also can covalently or noncovalently interact with major dietary components proteins such as casein, soybean proteins, whey proteins, and bovine serum albumin. Thus, whether the noncovalent interaction between the molecules of two polyphenols (quercetin and fisetin) and two proteins (bovine serum albumin and casein) has positive or negative impact on anticancer activities of the polyphenols against human gastric adenocarcinoma AGS cells was assessed in this study. The two polyphenols had obvious anticancer activities to the cells, because dose levels as low as 20-160 μmol/L caused reduced cell viability of 30.0-69.4% (quercetin) and 24.6-63.1% (fisetin) (using a cell treatment time of 24 h), or 9.9-48.6% (quercetin) and 6.4-29.9% (fisetin) (using a cell treatment time of 48 h). However, the cell treatments by the polyphenols in the presence of the two proteins mostly caused lower polyphenol activity toward the cells, compared with those treatments by the polyphenols in the absence of the proteins. Specifically, the presence of the proteins led to reduced growth inhibition in the cells, because higher cell viability of 33.2-86.7% (quercetin) and 29.1-77.7% (fisetin) at 24 h, or 14.1-66.8% (quercetin) and 7.9-59.0% (fisetin) at 48 h, were measured in these treated cells. The two coexisting proteins also yielded the polyphenol-treated cells with less mitochondrial membrane potential loss, less formation of reactive oxygen species, and decreased cell apoptosis. Thus, it is highlighted that the noncovalent interaction between dietary polyphenols and proteins resulted in weakened anticancer ability for the polyphenols to the gastric cancer cells.