Detoxification of cancerogenic compounds by lactic acid bacteria strains

ABSTRACT

Carcinogens in food are an important issue that threat people’s health right now. Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) strains as well-known probiotics have shown numerous perspectives in being used as a good food additive to confront cancerogenic compounds in recent years. Some LAB strains can remove cancerogenic compounds from medium environment via direct physical binding and avoid re-pollution of poisonous secondary metabolites which are generated from degradation of cancerogenic compounds. This article presents a whole overview of the physical-binding of LAB strains to such common cancerogenic compounds existed in food and feed environments as mycotoxins, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), heterocyclic amines (HAs) and pthalic acid esters (PAEs).In most cases, summaries of these published researches show that the binding of LAB strains to cancerogenic compounds is a physical process. Binding sites generally take place in cell wall, and peptidoglycan from LAB cells is the chief binding site. The adsorption of lactic acid bacteria to cancerogenic compounds is strain-specific. Specially, the strains from the two genera Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium show a better potential in binding cancerogenic compounds. Moreover, we firstly used molecular dynamic computer model as a highly potential tool to simulate the binding behavior of peptidoglycan from Lactobacillus acidophilus to DBP, one of pthalic acid esters with genetic toxicity. It was seen that the theoretical data were quite consistent with the experimental results in terms of the ability of this bacterium to bind DBP. Also, the toxicity reduction of cancerogenic compounds by LAB strains could be achieved either in gastrointestinal model or animal tests and clinical researches as well. In conclusion, carefully selected LAB strains should be a good solution as one of safety strategies to reduce potential risk of cancerogenic compounds from food-based products.

KEYWORDS:

• Lactic acid bacteria
• physical binding
• cancerogenic compounds
• mycotoxins
• polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons
• pthalic acid esters

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 31471710) and National High Technology Research and Development Program of The Ministry of Science and Technology of The People’s Republic of China (2011BAD23B04 and 2008AA10Z335). Authors cordially express their thanks to Mr. Fan Junfeng, associate Professor from the College of Biological Science & Biotechnology, Beijing Forestry University, and Mr. Zhang Liang, engineer of Beijing Neotrident Co. Ltd., for providing the technical support of Materials Studio software utilization.