Abstract
Tellurium is a rare element that has been regarded as a toxic, nonessential element, and its biological role is not clearly established. In addition, the biological effects of elemental tellurium and some of its organic and inorganic derivatives have been studied, leading to a set of interesting and promising applications. Diphenyl ditelluride (DPDT), an organic tellurium derivate, showed antioxidant, antigenotoxic, antimutagenic, and anticancer properties. The antioxidant and prooxidant properties of DPDT are complex and depend on experimental conditions, which may explain the contradictory reports of these properties. In addition, DPDT may exert its effects through different pathways, including distinct ones to those responsible for chemotherapy resistance phenotypes: transcription factors, membrane receptors, adhesion, structural molecules, cell cycle regulatory components, and apoptosis pathways. This review aims to present recent advances in our understanding of the biological effects, therapeutic potential, and safety of DPDT treatment. Moreover, original results demonstrating the cytotoxic effects of DPDT in different mammalian cell lines and systems biology analysis are included, and emerging approaches for possible future applications are inferred.
Highlights
Tellurium (Te) is a stable and solid element that pertains to chalcogens, which is the same group that includes sulfur, selenium, and polonium
Sulfur, and oxygen, Te does not have physiological functions in mammalian cell biology [3]; some publications have reported that Te is present in body fluids [1]
The effects of preexposure to low Diphenyl ditelluride (DPDT) concentrations (10, 50, and 100 nM) on DOXinduced cytotoxicity and genotoxicity were evaluated, and all DPDT concentrations tested decreased DOX-induced genotoxicity (Figure 3) and reactive oxygen species (ROS) formation (Figure 4) in mammalian cells. These results demonstrate that low DPDT concentrations have a chemoprotective effect on DOXinduced DNA damage and do not affect its cytotoxicity in mammalian cells
Summary
Tellurium (Te) is a stable and solid element that pertains to chalcogens (group 16 in the periodic table), which is the same group that includes sulfur, selenium, and polonium. Sulfur, and oxygen, Te does not have physiological functions in mammalian cell biology [3]; some publications have reported that Te is present in body fluids [1]. The use of Te in the manufacturing of electronic devices and nanomaterials demands safety risk assessment to deal with the electronic material constituents. These materials usually can be numerous toxic elements, explaining why research on the environmental and occupational toxicity of these materials has been widely conducted [11,12,13,14]. We emphasize the biological activities of an OT compound, diphenyl ditelluride (DPDT) (Figure 1), aiming to argue and discuss its contrasting antioxidant [21], cytotoxic [22], and antiproliferative [20, 23] effects
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