Indian Journal of Traditional Knowledge Vol 18(2), April 2019, pp 272-280 Assessment of anticancer potential of selected Holothuria species Sakineh Mashjoor 1 , Morteza Yousefzadi* ,1,+ & Fatemeh Pishevarzad 1 1 Department of Marine biology, Faculty of Marine Science and Technology, University of Hormozgan, Bandar Abbas 79177, Iran E-mail: + morteza110110@gmail.com Received 24 November 2018; revised 19 February 2019 All pharmaceutical fields are concerned about increase in cancer incidence throughout the world. Therefore, the discovery of new substances from natural origin to produce the cytotoxic drugs is required. For this purpose, we evaluated the anticancer activity of three Holothuria sea cucumbers species (Holothuria scabra, H. parva and H. leucospilota) from the Persian Gulf, Iran, of their extract from different organs, such as gonads (G), body wall (BW), intestine tract (IT), respiratory tree (RT), coelomic fluid (CF) and cuvierian tubules (CT) using organic solvents of n-Hexane (n-Hex), ethyl acetate (EtOAc) and Methanol (MeOH). Then cytotoxicity potential of each fraction was estimated using MTT assay to comparison of cell viability of human cancer (Caco-2) vs normal cell lines (HeLa). The data illustrated that toxicity toward cell lines (Caco-2) was only noticed for EtOAc extracts of BW organs of H. parva (up to 92% at 250 µg/mL, IC 50 =16.78 μg/mL), followed by EtOAc extracts of CF organs of H. scabra (up to 88% at 250 µg/mL, IC 50 =24.36 μg/mL). While, the more effective extracts was noticed against HeLa cells was detected for EtOAc extracts of IT organs of H. Parva (up to 80% at 250 µg/mL, IC 50 =46.25 μg/mL). Significant cytotox potential were found in this study, which may be linked to the presence of possible anticancer compounds in chosen fractions and selective toxicity toward different cell lines. Keywords: Cell-based assays, MTT, Persian Gulf, Sea cucumber, Toxic effect IPC Code: Int. Cl. 19 : C12Q 1/6839, A61K 38/00, A61K 31/737, A01N 25/32 Cancer is one of the diseases characterized by out-of- control cell growth that is the leading cause of death in the developed world 1 . Occurrence of certain mutations in DNA leads to cancer by disrupting the programming regulating processes. The process of transformation of normal cells to cancer cells is known as carcinogenesis. It is characterized by a progression of changes at cellular and genetic level that reprogram a cell to form a malignant tumor 1 . Currently, the intervention in cancer diseases involves chemotherapy and surgery that eliminate cancer tissues 2 . There is an increase in the number of cancer drugs that exhibit a relatively short clinical life span and become ineffective or the very potent drugs show serious side effects 3 . Cytotoxic agents are the traditional therapies that damage cancer cells by interfering with DNA replication or its precursor, inhibiting the cellular division 4 . The anticancer molecular mechanisms include the induction of tumor cell apoptosis through the activation of intracellular caspase cell death pathways, arrest of the cell cycle at S or G2/M phases, influence on nuclear factors, NF-κB, and up-down regulation of certain cellular receptors and enzymes participating in cancerogenesis, such as EGFR (epidermal growth factor receptor), Akt (protein kinase B), ERK (extracellular signal-regulated kinases), FAK (focal adhesion kinase), MMP-9 (matrix metalloproteinase-9) and others 5 . Although anticancer agents have the great drawback of killing healthy cells along with cancer cells and side effects associated with their usefulness 6 . Hence, biomedical researchers are trying to identify and develop new types of natural products contain effective and safe anticancer agents, therefore nowadays uses of sea cucumbers due to their potential health benefits to humans are attracting much attention among consumers and scientists. Studies on natural compounds from marine environment have been steadily increasing because global distribution of the marine biota far exceeds that of the terrestrial environment 1 . Among, sea cucumbers (class Holothuroidea), mostly have bioactive secondary metabolites and the medicinal potential for drug discovery 7 . Sea cucumbers are marine invertebrates of the phylum Echinoderm that found in the benthic areas and deep sea floor worldwide 8 , which are important as food and folk medicine systems, particularly in some parts of Asia 7,9 . Sea cucumbers have an impressive profile of unique bioactive molecules and the medicinal ————— *Corresponding author brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by NOPR