Recombinant engineering of L-methioninase using two different promoter and expression systems and in vitro analysis of its anticancer efficacy on different human cancer cell lines

Recombinant methioninase (rMETase) is an enzyme that has antitumor activity. In this work, METase gene from Pseudomonas putida ATTCC 8209 was cloned to pT7-7 plasmid (yielded, PT7-METase-R7 clone) and expressed in E coi strain BL21 (DE3). A protein band with a molecular massof 42 kDa was visualized by SDS-PAGE. The applied protocol yielded a total protein of 3.13 g with a recovery of 66.89% and a specific activity of 18.59 U mg^-1 which considered as a low yield. However, when the METase gene was cloned to the vector (pTrc99A, clone: pTrc99A-MET-3) cells of E coi JM109 yielded a total protein of 32.63 g with a recovery of 41.62% and a specific activity of 54.86 U mg^–1 which revealed that the enhancement of METase gene expression by trc promoter was more than the T7 RNA polymerase promoter. The t_1/2 of the rMETase was 2 h asanalyzed in mice by IV injection. Antitumor efficacy of rMETase was studied in five human cancer cell lines. At 1 U mL^–1 the growth rate of treated colon cancer cell lines, Colo205 and SW620, with rMETase was 46 and 32% relative to control, respectively. With the ovarian cancer cell line (A2780) rMETase produced an inhibition effect of 54% at 1.5 U mL^–1. In addition, the growth rate was reduced to 45 and 53% with the skin cancer cell line (A375) and the breast cancer cell line (MCF-7), respectively. These results indicate the feasibility of rMETase for use as a potent antitumor agent.