Bleomycin ReadyMade™ Solution

9041-93-4

C55H84N17O21S3 (Bleomycin A2); C55H84N20O21S2 (Bleomycin B2)

2927.17 (Bleomycin)

Source: Streptomyces verticillus

-20°C

Spectrum: Bleomycin is used as a selective agent for Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria.

Microbiology Applications: Bleomycin has been used to induce chronic lung disease in animal models to study antifibrotic therapy for COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2).

Plant Biology Applications: Bleomycin can be used as a selectable marker for plant cell transformation with Nicotiana plumbaginifolia using Agrobacterium tumefaciens. The expression of this determinant confers resistance to Bleomycin and allows selection of transformed plant cells (Hile et al, 1986).

Eukaryotic Cell Culture Applications: Bleomycin can be used as a selection agent in different cell lines.
Recently, mesenchymal stem cells (MSc) secretome has been used as a strategy for COVID-19. Evidence from murine models indicate that he secretome can be used for pulmonary injuries induced wiith Bleomycin, due to its content: growth factors, extracellular vesicles, and exosomes. The MSc secretome testing and production in xenofree conditions could be used as an alternative approach for SARS-Cov-2 treatement in vivo (Deffune et al, 2020).

Cancer Applications: Bleomycin contains a disaccharide moiety composed of 2 unusual sugars, L-glucose and 3-O-carbamoyl-D-mannose. Bleomycin could be regarded as a modular system composed of a tumor-targeting agent (the dissacharide moiety) and a tumoricidal agent (deglycobleomycin). The disaccharide moiety is responsible for the tumor cell targeting properties of Bleomycin. Bleomycin analogs were prepared, the glycosylated analogs were more cytotoxic to cultured DU145 prostate cancer cells. These findings establish a role for the Bleomycin disaccharide in tumor targeting/uptake and suggest that the disaccharide moiety may be capable of delivering other cytotoxins to cancer cells. Cytotoxicity testing with DU145 human prostate cancer cells in vitro (Schroeder et al, 2014).
Bleomycin is used in combination with other antineoplastic agents in studying lymphomas, testicular carcinomas, and squamous cell carcinomas. Authors found that the human L-carnitine transporter (hCT2) is involved in bleomycin-A5 uptake. NT2/D1 human testicular cancer cells which highly express hCT2 are very sensitive to Bleomycin-A5. Data suggest that hCT2 can mediate the uptake of Bleomycin A5 (Aouida et al, 2010).
In cell culture experiments with Bleomycins and BLM carbohydrates conjugated to microbubbles, it has been demonstrated that Bleomycins are tumor-seeking molecules. Biotinylate Bleomycin A5 was attached to microbubbles, and a conjugate-containing solution was passed over a monolayer of MCF-7 cells. The microbubbles adhered to the MCF-7 cells. The conjugate did not bind to a normal breast cell line or to matched noncancer cell lines. No binding occurred if the microbubbles lacked conjugated Bleomycin A5 or if the microbubble lacked the carbohydrate moiety (Chapuis et al, 2009).
A well-known characteristic of tumor cells is the Warburg effect, that is the propensity of tumor cells to produce increased ATP via glycolysis rather than by mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation. The shift to glycolysis is accompanied by upregulation of glucose transporters to provide the greater amounts of glucose needed to support increased glycolysis. If authors treated two normal cell lines (normal WI-38 cells and normal kidney CCD-1105 KIDTr cells) with the inhibitor rotenone (a mitochondrial complex 1 inhibitor), this forced these cells to use increase glycolysis in the same fashion as tumor cells and this resulted in an enhanced ability to incorporate BLM-Cy5. The finding implies that the BLM saccharide moiety may be able to deliver other cytotoxins selectively to tumor cells (Mobasheril, 2005).