Abstract

Ciprofloxacin HCL is a fluoroqinolone antibiotic, effective against a wide range of Gram positive and Gram negative bacteria, used mainly in the treatment of urinary tract infections, pulmonary tract, prostate gland, bone and bone marrow infections. Ciprofloxacin is also known for its in vitro anticancer properties. Several reports describe anti-proliferative and cytotoxic effects, apoptotic activity and tumour regression with various quinolones. In this study, murine glioma cell line GL26 has been used, for evaluation of cytotoxic properties of ciprofloxacin, against neoplastic cells. For this purpose, we used different concentrations of ciprofloxacin range from 10 to 600 mu g/ml. Cell viability was counted using trypan blue assay. Ciprofloxacin induced morphological changes and decreased viability of GL26 cells in the concentration and time dependent manner. In low concentrations, a weak cytotoxic effect of ciprofloxacin was observed only after 24 h incubation. Observations indicated that in the highest concentration of ciprofloxacin, after 24, 48 and 72 h of incubation only a very small number of living cells (2%) remained. We can conclude that since ciprofloxacin displays anti-proliferative characteristics in vitro, this drug may operate as a novel treatment in glioma mouse model, and in the next step could lead to the design of a new clinical trials concerning this remedial strategy and its outcome in human glioma.