Estudo da atividade antimetastática da biflorina, uma o-naftoquinona isolada das raízes de Capraria biflora

Abstract

The main cause of mortality in cancer patients is related to the incidence of secondary tumors in the body. Owning up to the deficiency of therapeutic schemes direct to the treatment of metastasis, many efforts are being launched to develop drugs with anti-metastatic potential. In previous studies performed in our laboratory, biflorin, an o-naphthoquinone isolated from the roots of Capraria biflora, was found to increase the survival rates of B16-bearing mice without significant toxicity. In spite of these findings we decided to evaluate the anti-metastatic activity of biflorin using B16-F10 (murine melanoma) and MDAMB-435 (human melanoma) cells line. The experimental metastasis model was achieved by injecting B16-F10 cells in the tail vein of C57BL/6 mice. In this assay, biflorin (25 and 50 mg/kg/day) inhibited the formation of metastatic nodules in 57 and 71 %, respectively. Nevertheless, histopathological analyses of biflorin-treated lungs showed the presence of erythrocytes and hemosiderin, indicating the occurrence of recent and late hemorrhage. In order to evaluate how biflorin inhibits metastasis, we carried out in vitro tests using two cell lines of metastatic melanoma, B16-F10 and MDAMB-435. In the cell adhesion assay, biflorin inhibited adhesion of both cells lines on type I collagen, a substrate of the extracellular matrix. Moreover, biflorin was able to inhibit cell motility in the wound healing assay. The concentrations used in these assays did not show any cytotoxicity after 24 h of incubation, excluding a false-positive. Even so, in the zymogram assay we observed that biflorin did not alter the release of metallopeptidases -2 and -9 into growth medium, thus excluding this as the means by which biflorin exerts the anti-metastatic effect. These data suggest that biflorin has a promising anti-metastatic potential, as shown by its anti-adhesion and anti-migration properties on metastatic melanoma cell lines, however further studies are indispensable to elucidate its action mechanism.