Estudo do potencial citotóxico de derivados de lausona em linhagens tumorais

Abstract

Lung cancer is the deadliest type of cancer in the world and the second most incidence. This type of cancer is mainly caused by smoking and its aggressivity is related to its predilection to metastasis. Chemotherapy is one of the main treatments for cancer, although the drugs used are not effective against some types of cancer and show several side effects. There is a need to search for compounds with antitumor activity and plants are a great source of compounds with biological activity. Lausona is a naphthoquinone found in plants from the Lawsonia genus that show a high cytotoxic effect in cancer cell lines and its derivatives seems to show an even higher cytotoxic effect. Thus, the aim of this work was to evaluate the cytotoxic potential of lawsone derivatives against cancer cell lines. A high growth inhibition was observed in all the cell lines tested. Among the derivatives evaluated, FMO-1 was the one with the highest cytotoxic effect, therefore, it was selected for the following analysis in A549 cells The clonogenic assay showed that the compound was able to reduce colony formation in all the concentrations tested. The compound was also able to inhibit cell migration at 4.4 μM in the wound-healing assay. Morphological changes and cytometry analysis shows that the compound induces apoptosis and necrosis in A549 cells in the highest concentration tested. These results show that FMO-1 as well as other lawsone derivatives display a high inhibitory effect and may induce apoptosis in several cancer cell lines. Thus, FMO-1 was the most promising of the compounds tested and has great potential in the treatment of cancer.