Novel Efficient Bioprocessing of Marine Chitins into Active Anticancer Prodigiosin

Abstract

Marine chitins (MC) have been utilized for the production of vast array of bioactive products, including chitooligomers, chitinase, chitosanase, antioxidants, anti-NO, and antidiabetic compounds. The aim of this study is the bioprocessing of MC into a potent anticancer compound, prodigiosin (PG), via microbial fermentation. This bioactive compound was produced by Serratia marcescens TKU011 with the highest yield of 4.62 mg/mL at the optimal conditions of liquid medium with initial pH of 5.65–6.15 containing 1% α-chitin, 0.6% casein, 0.05% K2HPO4, and 0.1% CaSO4. Fermentation was kept at 25 °C for 2 d. Notably, α-chitin was newly investigated as the major potential material for PG production via fermentation; the salt CaSO4 was also found to play the key role in the enhancement of PG yield of Serratia marcescens fermentation for the first time. PG was qualified and identified based on specific UV, MALDI-TOF MS analysis. In the biological activity tests, purified PG demonstrated potent anticancer activities against A549, Hep G2, MCF-7, and WiDr with the IC50 values of 0.06, 0.04, 0.04, and 0.2 µg/mL, respectively. Mytomycin C, a commercial anti-cancer compound was also tested for comparison purpose, showing weaker activity with the IC50 values of 0.11, 0.1, 0.14, and 0.15 µg/mL, respectively. As such, purified PG displayed higher 2.75-fold, 1.67-fold, and 3.25-fold efficacy than Mytomycin C against MCF-7, A549, and Hep G2, respectively. The results suggest that marine chitins are valuable sources for production of prodigiosin, a potential candidate for cancer drugs.

Utilization of Crab Waste for Cost-Effective Bioproduction of Prodigiosin

“…PG has been reported to have effective inhibition against numerous cancerous cell lines, including MCF-7, A549, and Hep G2 in many studies. However, the effect of PG against WiDr has been rarely reported [32]. The result of the biological activities in this study confirmed that the purified PG produced by S. marcescens TNU02 PG was active molecule with potential anticancer properties.…”

“…Our previous studies revealed that the salt composition, including sulfate and phosphate salts, demonstrate a significant effect on PG production using S. marcescens [11,[30][31][32] (Figure 3).…”

“…K 2 HPO 4 and MgSO 4 have been found to be the most suitable sources of phosphate and sulfate salts, respectively, in many previous reports [11]. Recently, K 2 HPO 4 and CaSO 4 have been found to be the best salt compositions for PG production [32]. However, in this study, KH 2 PO 4 and (NH 4 ) 2 SO 4 were newly found to play a significant role in PG yield enhancement in the fermentation of S. marcescens.…”

“…These previous studies focused on reusing squid pens as a C/N source for the production of PG via fermentation by S. marcescens TKU011 [29][30][31] and S. marcescens TNU01 [11]. Recently, we found that the addition of chitin to the medium has a significant effect on enhancing PG yield in the culture broth and that α-chitin (extracted from crab shells) has a better effect compared to β-chitin (extracted from squid pens) [32]. This evidence indicated that materials containing α-chitin may be a good source for PG production.…”

Microbial Conversion of Shrimp Heads to Proteases and Chitin as an Effective Dye Adsorbent

“…Chitin and its derivatives have been used in many fields; for instance, environmental treatment, agriculture, medicine, and food [ 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 ]. Chitinous fishery by-products, such as shrimp heads, shrimp shells, crab shells, and squid pens are the major sources for chitin and chitosan preparations [ 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 ]. These types of materials contain a considerable amount of protein [ 13 ].…”