Journal of Cancer Therapy, 2013, 4, 7-19 http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/jct.2013.46A3002 Published Online February 2013 (http://www.scirp.org/journal/jct) Synergistic Antitumor Activity of Vitamins C and K3 on Human Bladder Cancer Cell Lines Karen McGuire1, James M. Jamison1*, Jacques Gilloteaux2, Jack L. Summers1 1The Apatone Development Center, St. Thomas Hospital, Summa Health System, Akron, USA; 2Department of Anatomical Sciences, St Georges’ University International School of Medicine, K B Taylor Scholar’s Programme, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. Email: *
[email protected] Received April 24th, 2013; revised May 26th, 2013; accepted June 3rd, 2013 Copyright © 2013 Karen McGuire et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. ABSTRACT Exponentially growing cultures of human bladder tumor cells (RT4 and T24) were treated with Vitamin C (VC) alone, Vitamin K3 (VK3) alone, or with a VC:VK3 combination continuously for 5 days or treated with vitamins for 1 h, washed with PBS and then incubated in culture medium for 5 days. Co-administration of the vitamins enhanced the antitumor activity 12- to 24-fold for the RT-4 cells and 6- to 41-fold for the T24 cells. Flow cytometry of RT4 cells ex- posed to the vitamins revealed a growth arrested population and a population undergoing cell death. Growth arrested cells were blocked near the G0/G1-S-phase interface, while cell death was due to autoschizis. Catalase treatment abro- gated both cell cycle arrest and cell death which implicated hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) in these processes.