Antiproliferative activity of Pterodon pubescens Benth. seed oil and its active principle on human melanoma cells.
October 10, 2007 12:50 am melanoma cells, Antiproliferative, Pterodon pubescens Benth
Instituto de Ciências Biológicas, Universidade Federal de Goiás, Campus Samambaia, CP 131, 74001-970 Goiânia, GO, Brazil.
On a preliminary screening, relevant in vitro antiproliferative activity was observed to the crude ethanolic extract of Pterodon pubescens seed oil against the human melanoma cell line SK MEL 37. The diethyl ether fraction from crude ethanolic extract which exhibited stronger activity was submitted to fractionation by gradient elution with hexane/ethyl acetate. Subfraction A, eluted by hexane/ethyl acetate (80:20), was essentially the most active between all the assayed subfractions with an IC(50) of 37mug/ml calculated by the MTT colorimetric method. At this concentration, subfraction A caused morphological features and internucleosomal DNA fragmentation pattern of apoptosis. Through chromatographic separation, the furane diterpene 1 was isolated from this active subfraction and identified by spectral techniques. Compound 1 showed an IC(50) value of 32muM and fluorescence staining with DAPI revealed some typical nuclear changes which are characteristic of apoptosis. These findings support a role for diterpenoids vouacapan-type skeleton as a model to develop new anticancer agents.
