Research Article Inhibitory Effect of Cuphea aequipetala Extracts on Murine B16F10 Melanoma In Vitro and In Vivo Ashanti Concepcion Uscanga-Palomeque , 1 Pablo Zapata-Benavides , 1 Santiago Saavedra-Alonso, 1 Diana Elisa Zamora-Ávila, 2 Moisés Armides Franco-Molina , 1 Mariela Arellano-Rodr-guez , 1 Edgar Manilla-Muñoz, 1 Ana Carolina Mart-nez-Torres, 1 Laura M. Trejo-Ávila , 1 and Cristina Rodr-guez-Padilla 1 1 Universidad Aut´ onoma de Nuevo Le´ on, Facultad de Ciencias Biol´ ogicas, Laboratorio de Inmunolog´ ıa y Virolog´ ıa, 66455 San Nicolas de los Garza, NL, Mexico 2 Universidad Aut´ onoma de Nuevo Le´ on, Facultad de Medicina Veterinaria y Zootecnia, Departamento de Virolog´ ıa, 66050 Cd Gral Escobedo, NL, Mexico Correspondence should be addressed to Pablo Zapata-Benavides; pablozapata@hotmail.com Received 21 January 2019; Accepted 7 May 2019; Published 29 May 2019 Academic Editor: Gail B. Mahady Copyright © 2019 Ashanti Concepcion Uscanga-Palomeque et al. Tis is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Cuphea aequipetala (C. aequipetala) has been used in Mexican traditional medicine since prehispanic times to treat tumors. In this paper, we evaluated the antiproliferative and apoptotic efect of the methanolic and aqueous extracts of C. aequipetala on several cancer cell lines including the B16F10 cell line of murine melanoma and carried a murine model assay. In vitro assay analyzed the efect in the cellular cycle and several indicators of apoptosis, such as the caspase-3 activity, DNA fragmentation, phosphatidylserine exposure (Annexin-V), and induction of cell membrane permeabilization (propidium iodide) in the B16F10 cells. In vivo, groups of C57BL/6 female mice were subcutaneously injected with 5x10 5 B16F10 cells and treated with 25 mg/mL of C. aequipetala extracts via oral. Aqueous and methanolic extracts showed a cytotoxic efect in MCF-7, HepG2, and B16F10 cell lines. Te methanolic extract showed more antiproliferative efect with less concentration, and for this reason, the in vitro experiments were only continued with it. Tis extract was able to induce accumulation of cells on G1 phase of the cell cycle; moreover, it was able to induce DNA fragmentation and increase the activity of caspase-3 in B16F10 cells. On the other hand, in the murine model of melanoma, the aqueous extract showed a greater reduction of tumor size in comparison with the methanolic extract, showing an 80% reduction versus one of around 31%, both compared with the untreated control, indicating a better antitumor efect of C. aequipetala aqueous extract via oral administration. In conclusion, the in vitro data showed that both C. aequipetala extracts were able to induce cytotoxicity through the apoptosis pathway in B16F10 cells, and in vivo, the oral administration of aqueous extract reduces the melanoma tumoral mass, suggesting an important antitumoral efect and the perspective to search for efector molecules involved in it. 1. Introduction Malignant melanoma is the most aggressive form of skin cancer [1, 2], because of its ability to metastasize to other organs such as lungs, liver, brain, or lymph nodes [3, 4]. Te global incidence of melanoma has been steadily increasing in the last decades [5, 6], afecting mainly white men [7] with an average age at diagnosis of 57 years and a 5-year survival of around 5% to 19% in late stages of diagnosis [8]. Morbidity and mortality are primarily associated with metastatic disease and poor responses to most standard chemotherapies [8]. Due to these problems, eforts to fnd new and better alternatives to increase the survival of patients with melanoma are a necessity. From this perspective, plant-derived compounds have received considerable attention in recent years because of their pharmacological properties, such as cytotoxicity and chemotherapeutic activities in cancer [9, 10]. Indeed, the Hindawi BioMed Research International Volume 2019, Article ID 8560527, 11 pages https://doi.org/10.1155/2019/8560527