Anticancer and Antioxidant Activities of Some Algae from Western Libyan Coast

Rabia Alghazeer,Mahboba B El-Naili,Nuri Awayn,Nazlin K Howell

doi:10.4236/ns.2018.107025

Abstract

Seaweeds are considered as one of the largest biomass producers in marine environment that is rich in bioactive metabolites and a source of natural ingredients for functional foods. The potential antioxidant activity and the potential inhibition of Caco2 cell proliferation, of crude extracts of: Chlorophyta (Ulva lactuca, and Codium tomentosum), Phaeophyta (Cystoseira crinita, Cystoseira stricta, and Sargassum vulgare), and Rhodophyta (Gelidium latifolium, Hypnea musciformis, and Jania rubens) were collected from western Libyan coast and evaluated in vitro. The antioxidant activity was determined by reducing power and DPPH assays while cell proliferation, morphological changes and the cell cycle arrest were assessed by MTT, inverted light microscope and flow cytometry methods respectively. The polyphenols and flavonoids rich extracts showed remarkable reducing power and antiradical properties. After exposure of Caco2 cells to various concentrations of extracts (50, 100, 150 and 200 μg/mL) especially from brown algae for 72 h, cell proliferation was reduced significantly. The antiproliferative effect of algae extracts was correlated with their polyphenol and flavonoid contents. Cell cycle analysis further showed that cells were arrested in G phases along with an increment in sub-diploidal cell population (sub-G) after extract application. These results imply that seaweeds which are rich in bioactive compounds may be used in anticancer drug research programs. However, further investigations are essential to reveal the molecular mechanisms of the anticancer activities of these algae.

Highlights

Seaweeds are large and diverse groups of plants that are rich in active metabolites and a source of novel ingredients for functional foods
The current study showed for the time the amounts of polyphenols and flavonoids in tested algae as well as their anticancer activity
The present study indicate that the alcoholic extracts of the brown algae C. crinite, C. stricta and S. vulgare possessed good reducing power, followed by red algae H. musciformis and G. latifolium Figure 1(b) & Figure 1(c) showing a steady increase in reductive potential of the brown seaweed with an increase in the absorbance in a concentration-dependent manner

Summary

Introduction

Seaweeds are large and diverse groups of plants that are rich in active metabolites and a source of novel ingredients for functional foods. Many studies show that some algae extracts display substantial antioxidant activities [9,10,11,12]. Antioxidant properties of some red, brown and green algae extracts have shown that they vary proportion to the content of antioxidative compounds [14]. The antioxidant activity in algae acts via several processes and compounds such as lipophilic scavengers (carotenoids), enzymatic scavengers (catalase, superoxide dismutase and peroxidase), and polyphenols [15, 16]

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