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Abstract

A malignant tumor is hard to eradicate by removing the mass surgically because the abnormal cells often metastasize. How to find and kill these metastatic cells is an important key to cure cancer. We have isolated over 100 filamentous fungi from soil of extreme environments in Taiwan, including forest, hot spring, lake and fruit tree rhizosphere in order to screen some biologically active compounds. Screening of anti-metastatic compounds, we used a set of highly metastatic cell lines, B16-F10 (mouse, melanoma) and HT-1080 (human, fibrosarcoma) and cell lines with low metastatic ability, B 16-F1 (mouse, melanoma) and MRC-5 (human, lung, normal diploid fibroblast). Cultures grown in microtiter plates were assayed by SRB (sulforhodamine B) method. The goal for this screening program is to isolate biologically active compounds that can inhibit the growth of highly metastatic cells such as B16-F10 and HT-1080 but little effect on low metastatic cells such as B10-F1 and MRC-5. Some strains' media showed significant differences in cytotoxicity between the highly metastatic cells and the low metastatic cells. These results suggest that some products in these media may contain metastasis-specific or cell-specific toxins.

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