Statins, the drugs used for the treatment of hypercholesterolemia, have come into the spotlight not only as chemoadjuvants, but also as potential stem cell modulators in the context of regenerative therapy. In our study, we compared the in vitro effects of all clinically used statins on the viability of human pancreatic cancer (MiaPaCa-2) cells, non-cancerous human embryonic kidney (HEK 293) cells and adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cells (ADMSC). Additionally, the effect of statins on viability of MiaPaCa-2 and ADMSC cells spheroids was tested. Furthermore, we performed a microarray analysis on ADMSCs treated with individual statins (12 μM) and compared the importance of the effects of statins on gene expression between stem cells and pancreatic cancer cells. Concentrations of statins that significantly affected cancer cells viability (< 40 μM) did not affect stem cells viability after 24 h. Moreover, statins that didn´t affect viability of cancer cells grown in a monolayer, induce the disintegration of cancer cell spheroids. The effect of statins on gene expression was significantly less pronounced in stem cells compared to pancreatic cancer cells. In conclusion, the low efficacy of statins on non-tumor and stem cells at concentrations sufficient for cancer cells growth inhibition, support their applicability in chemoadjuvant tumor therapy.

Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology University of Chemistry and Technology Prague 166 28 Czech Republic

Department of Informatics and Chemistry University of Chemistry and Technology Prague 166 28 Czech Republic

Institute of Medical Biochemistry and Laboratory Diagnostics and 4Th Department of Internal Medicine 1St Faculty of Medicine Charles University and General University Hospital Prague Prague 121 08 Czech Republic

Institute of Medical Biology Genetics and Clinical Genetics Faculty of Medicine Comenius University Bratislava 813 72 Slovak Republic

Laboratory of Genomics and Bioinformatics Institute of Molecular Genetics Czech Academy of Sciences Prague 142 20 Czech Republic

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