Assessment of anticancer potential of selected Holothuria species

Abstract

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 <em>Holothuria</em> sea cucumbers species (<em>Holothuria scabra</em>, <em>H. parva</em> and <em>H. leucospilota</em>) 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 <em>H. parva</em> (up to 92% at 250 µg/mL, IC₅₀=16.78 μg/mL), followed by EtOAc extracts of CF organs of <em>H. scabra </em>(up to 88% at 250 µg/mL, IC₅₀=24.36 μg/mL). While, the more effective extracts was noticed against HeLa cells was detected for EtOAc extracts of IT organs of <em>H. Parva </em>(up to 80% at 250 µg/mL, IC₅₀=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.