In vitro assessment of murine Melanoma cells sensitivity to non-thermal atmospheric plasma

Melanoma is a dangerous skin cancer incidence of which has been increasing over the past years, so is important the search for new treatments. The purpose of the present work is to evaluate the relative sensitivity of a melanoma cell line to helium-generated non-thermal plasma. For that, three cell types were used (murine melanoma B16 cells, mouse embryo fibroblasts, and peripherical blood lymphocytes) and both cytotoxicity and genotoxicity were evaluated. The lethality produced by no-thermal plasma was higher in melanoma mouse cells compared with lymphocytes and fibroblasts. Accordingly, B16 cells showed higher levels of DNA fragmentation by this agent. Overall, the results suggest that non-thermal plasma has the potential to become a good alternative for treating skin cancer.