A melanoma cell line exposed to extremely low frequency magnetic fields: assessment of proliferation.

GUERRA, MARÍA FLORENCIA; LACOSTE, MARÍA GABRIELA; ELIÇABE, RICARDO JAVIER; ANZULOVICH, ANA CECILIA; MAKINISTIAN, LEONARDO

San Luis

Congreso; XXXVII Reunión Científica Anual de la Sociedad de Biología de Cuyo; 2019

Sociedad de Biología de Cuyo

Extremely low frequency magnetic fields (ELF-MF) have been the axis of heated discussions for decades for their possibly causal link to childhood leukemia. However, the ELF-MF are interesting for the opposite reason: a possible therapeutic use. Indeed, there are several in vitro experiments reporting inhibition of cancer cell proliferation, and some in vivo studies also point in the same direction: significant reduction of tumour growth has been reported in mice with induced breast cancer tumors, sarcoma, and melanoma. In order to elucidate the effect of magnetic fields on the B-16 cell line (murine melanoma), we built two identical systems of coils of cubic geometry. Each one consisted of a triaxial system of 3 pairs of coils in an orthogonal arrange. Then we proceeded to perform three experiments (each repeated three times). In all of them cells were seeded in 96-well microplates (one ¨control¨ and one ¨exposed¨) and cell viability was measured by the MTT assay at T = 72 h (beginning of exposure was considered time zero, T = 0 h). A negative control (or sham-exposure) was first conducted were both plates were subjected to the same field (static, vertical 50 µT, ¨MFref¨). In a second experiment one of the plates was exposed to a 50 Hz 100 µTpeak AC field plus MFref while the other one was kept at MFref. In the third experiment a gradient of the DC field was evaluated. No significant differences were found between both plates in any of the three experiments. In summary, the combinations of AC/DC magnetic fields that we tested, for the time we did (duration of exposure: 1 h) did not affect the viability in the B-16 cell line. After an extensive study of the literature, which shows that ELF-MF intensity and waveform, duration, intermittence, and cycling of exposure can affect not only proliferation but also other endpoints such as the expression of clock genes, we decided to perform experiments to assess if ELF-MF affect the circadian expression of BMAL1. These experiments are currently underway.