In vitro anticancer activity of methanolic extract of Granulocystopsis sp., a microalgae from an oligotrophic oasis in the Chihuahuan desert

PeerJ

article

Faviola Tavares-Carreón¹  Susana De la Torre-Zavala¹  Hector Fernando Arocha-Garza¹  Valeria Souza²  Luis J. Galán-Wong¹  Hamlet Avilés-Arnaut¹ 

[1] Facultad de Ciencias Biológicas, Instituto de Biotecnología, Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León;Departamento de Ecología Evolutiva, Instituto de Ecología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

关键词: Microalgae extract;    Cuatro cienegas;    Anticancer activity;    Apoptosis;   

DOI  :  10.7717/peerj.8686

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Inra

【 摘 要 】

With the purpose of discovering new anticancer molecules that might have fewer side effects or reduce resistance to current antitumor drugs, a bioprospecting study of the microalgae of the Cuatro Cienegas Basin (CCB), an oasis in the Chihuahuan desert in Mexico was conducted. A microalgae was identified as Granulocystopsis sp. through sequencing the rbcL gene and reconstruction of a phylogenetic tree, and its anticancer activities were assessed using various in vitro assays and different cell lines of human cancers, including lung, skin melanoma, colorectal, breast and prostatic cancers, as well as a normal cell line. The values of IC50 of the microalgae methanolic extract using the MTT assay were lower than 20 μg/ml, except that in the lung cancer line and the normal cell line. In vitro, the microalgae extract caused the loss of membrane integrity, monitored by the trypan blue exclusion test and exhibited marked inhibition of adhesion and cell proliferation in cancer cell lines, through the evaluation of the clonogenic assay. Also, typical nuclear changes of apoptotic processes were observed under the microscope, using the dual acridine orange/ethidium bromide fluorescent staining. Finally, the microalgae extract increased the activity of caspases 3 and 7 in skin melanoma, colon, breast and prostate cancer cells, in the same way as the apoptotic inductor and powerful antitumoral drug, doxorubicin. This study shows the anticancer activity from Granulocystopsis sp., a microalgae isolated from the CCB.

【 授权许可】

CC BY