Research Article Redox Stimulation of Human THP-1 Monocytes in Response to Cold Physical Plasma

Copyright © 2016 Sander Bekeschus 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. In plasma medicine, cold physical plasma delivers a delicate mixture of reactive components to cells and tissues. Recent studies suggested a beneficial role of cold plasma in wound healing. Yet, the biological processes related to the redox modulation via plasma are not fully understood. We here used the monocytic cell line THP-1 as a model to test their response to cold plasma in vitro. Intriguingly, short term plasma treatment stimulated cell growth. Longer exposure only modestly compromised cell viability but apparently supported the growth of cells that were enlarged in size and that showed enhancedmetabolic activity. A significantly increased mitochondrial content in plasma treated cells supported this notion. On THP-1 cell proteome level, we identified an increase of protein translation with key regulatory proteins being involved in redox regulation (hypoxia inducible factor