Abstract
Brown seaweeds contain bioactive compounds that show anti-tumorigenic effects. These characteristics have been repeatedly observed in the Lessoniaceae family. Egregia menziesii, a member of this family, is distributed in the North Pacific and its properties have been barely studied. We evaluated herein the cytotoxic and anti-proliferative activity of extracts of this seaweed, through toxicity assay in Artemia salina and lymphocytes, and MTT proliferation assay, in Bergmann glia cells, 3T3-L1 and brain cancer cell lines. E. menziesii’s extracts inhibited the spread of all the tested cell lines. The hexane extract showed the highest cytotoxic activity, while the methanol extract was moderately cytotoxic. Interestingly, seaweed extracts displayed a selective inhibition pattern. These results suggest that E. menziesii’s extracts might be good candidates for cancer prevention and the development of novel chemotherapies due to its highest cytotoxicity in transformed cells compare to glia primary cultures.
Highlights
In recent years, a wide variety of biological activities have been characterized in marine products.Among the different marine sources for bioactive substances, seaweeds are of special importance due to the rich, varied, and underexploited amount of bioactive substances they contain
The first step to assess the cytotoxic potential of E. menziesii extracts was through the wellestablished Artemia salina brine shrimp toxicity test
The Hx and Chl extracts showed similar lethality pattern, the LC50 values for Hx and Chl extracts were in the range of the LC50 of L-ascorbic acid (LAA), a positive control, LC50 = 169.46 ± 0.067, 197.39 ± 0.015, and 150.33 ± 0.036 μg/mL, respectively
Summary
A wide variety of biological activities have been characterized in marine products.Among the different marine sources for bioactive substances, seaweeds are of special importance due to the rich, varied, and underexploited amount of bioactive substances they contain. A brown alga of this family that contains phlorotannins, has been reported to display diverse biological activities such as antioxidant effects [11], and its immunomodulatory properties have been associated with antidiabetic [12], antihypertensive [13], anti-inflammatory [14], radioprotective [15], and antiproliferative [16] effects. Egregia menziesii is another marine brown alga belonging to Lessoniaceae family, distributed in the North Pacific from Alaska to Mexico, whose biological activity is being investigated due to its close phylogenetic relationship with Ecklonia cava
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