Enhanced Anti-Cancer Effect of Snake Venom Activated NK Cells on Lung Cancer Cells by Inactivation of NF-κB

In the present study, we investigated anti-cancer effect of snake venom activated NK cells (NK-92MI) in lung cancer cell lines. We used snake venom (4 μg/ml) treated NK-92MI cells to co-culture with lung cancer cells. There was a further decrease in cancer cell growth up to 65% and 70% in A549 and NCI-H460 cell lines respectively, whereas 30–40% was decreased in cancer cell growth by snake venom or NK-92MI alone treatment. We further found that the expression of various apoptotic proteins such as that Bax, and cleaved caspase-3 as well as the expression of various death receptor proteins like DR3, DR4 and Fas was also further increased. Moreover, consistent with cancer cell growth inhibition, the DNA binding activity of NF-κB was also further inhibited after treatment of snake venom activated NK-92MI cells. Thus, the present data showed that activated NK cells could further inhibit lung cancer cell growth.