Abstract
Pachycereus marginatus (DC.) Britton & Rose and Ibervillea sonorae (S. Watson) Greene have been used in the Mexican traditional medicine for the treatment of various diseases, including cancer. The present study aims to investigate the cytotoxic activity of these plants against a murine lymphoma. Soxhlet extraction of dried and powdered plant material was performed with methanol. Also, a further partitioning of these methanolic extracts with hexane and ethyl acetate was achieved. The in vitro cytotoxic activity against the murine lymphoma L5178Y-R cell line was assessed via the colorimetric MTT assay. The methanol extract from P. marginatus exhibited high cytotoxic activity (up to 94%) at concentrations ranging from 3.9 to 500 μg/mL; however, hexane and ethyl acetate partitions from this methanolic extract showed lower but significant (p I. sonorae also showed significant (p cells at concentrations ranging from 7.81 to 500 μg/mL (methanolic extract up to 63% at 500 μg/mL; hexane partition up to 76% at 250 μg/mL; ethyl acetate partition up to 73% at 500 μg/mL). These results demonstrate that the methanol extracts and partitions from P. marginatus and I. sonorae possess significant cytotoxic activity against the murine lymphoma L5178Y-R and validate the ethnobotanical use of these plants for the treatment of diseases consistent with cancer symptomatology. Previous scientific reports describe the isolation of isoquinoline alkaloids of P. marginatus as well as cucurbitacins from I. sonorae, phytochemicals that could be responsible for their observed cytotoxic activity in this research. The direct extraction with methanol of medicinal plants allows extracting of both high and low-polarity compounds, contrary to the simple extraction with water that only allows obtaining compounds of high polarity. The subsequent partition of the methanol extract with a solvent of low polarity (hexane) and another of medium polarity (ethyl acetate) allows making a preliminary fractionation of the bioactive molecules present in the plant that will facilitate the bioguided chromatographic isolation of the pure compounds responsible for the biological activity of the plant.
Highlights
Cancer is a worldwide disease that is one of the leading causes of death [1]
The partitions derived from the methanolic extract of P. marginatus showed lower cytotoxicity at the lowest concentration tested
On the other side these partitions showed significant (p < 0.05) and concentration-dependent cytotoxicity against L5178Y-R cells at concentrations ranging from 7.81 to 500 μg/mL
Summary
Cancer is a worldwide disease that is one of the leading causes of death [1]. In 2012 there was reported an estimate of 14.1 million adults diagnosed with cancer around the world and 8.2 million of deaths from this condition in the same year [2]. As in other developing countries, cancer incidence and mortality have been on the rise in Mexico [4], where a large section of the population uses herbal medicines for the treatment of several diseases [5]. Three hundred plant species belonging to 90 botanical families used for cancer treatment have been recorded in Mexico, of which only 181 have been experimentally analyzed. The remaining 119 plant species are being used in the empirical treatment of diseases consistent with cancer symptomatology [6]
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