Avaliação da atividade citotóxica e anti-invasiva da biflorina em linhagens de câncer gástrico do tipo intestinal

Abstract

Natural products are sources of secondary metabolites with wide pharmacological applicability, including anticancer. Biflorin, a prenylated ortho-naphthoquinone that has been isolated from the roots of the Capraria biflora L. plant, has stood out as a potent prototype antitumor drug. However, despite promising potential, its antineoplastic capacity is incipiently applied to gastric cancer, one of the most incidente, aggressive and lethal cancers, nationally and globally. In this context, this study aimed to analyze the structure-toxicity relationship of biflorin by the redox in silico mechanism, as well as the in vitro cytotoxic and anti-invasive potential, using as a model strains of intestinal-type gastric adenocarcinoma metastatic (AGP01) and isolated from primary tumor (ACP03). In silico analysis showed that biflorin has a differentiated reactivity characteristic and can act as electron donor or acceptor in nucleophilic and electrophilic reactions, respectively. Moreover, when compared to other natural naphthoquinones such as β-lapachone and lapachol, it presented better redox properties and reactivity conditions, but with less toxic effect due to their ability to form more stable intermediates. The molecular simplification of biflorin also allowed to infer that the ortho-naphthoquinone functional group is probably the most related to naphthoquinones toxicity. Additionally, biflorin showed cytotoxic activity at considerably low concentrations for both strains, however, cytotoxicity was more pronounced for AGP01 (IC50 3.1 μM) compared to ACP03 (IC50 4.5 μM) at 48h treatment. Regarding antimetastatic activity, biflorin reduced the cell invasion capacity of the AGP01 strain only (p <0.0001). The results indicate that biflorin has cytotoxic activity for both gastric cancer strains AGP01 and ACP03, as well as anti-invasive specifically for metastatic cells AGP01. In addition, it was possible to clarify the probable selective cytotoxicity of biflorin based on its structural reactivity.