Potential anti-melanoma effects of terpenes derived from the essential oil of origanum vulgare.

FALCON C; CUELLO ORLANDI SF; PEREZ C; CAMPOS L; ALVAREZ SE; GATTI G; PONCE A

Congreso; SAIC 2019; 2019

In recent years, there has been a growinginterest in the biological activities of plants essential oils.Origanum vulgare L. species, belongs to the Lamiaceae familyand is distributed in Europe, Mediterranean Basin and Asia andare mainly used for gastronomic purposes. The objective of thisstudy was to evaluate the anti-melanoma action of Oreganumvulgare essential oils (OvEO) and the major terpenes that derivefrom it. In order to investigate the potential anticancer effects ofOvEO in vivo, mice were injected subcutaneously with 1 × 10B16 melanoma cells in the right flank. At 11 day, the mice weretreated intratumorally with 5 % OvEO in isotonic saline solution.OvEO inhibited tumor growth showing a reduction of 35-40% fortumor size on days 15, 17 and 19, which revealed a significantanti-melanoma potential. Then, we analysed the chemicalcomposition of OvEO by gas chromatography and Ý-Terpinene(13.7 %) and Terpinen-4-ol (11.2 %) were the main compounds.In vitro antiproliferative activity of these terpenes was assayedon culture of A375 and Lu1205, melanoma cells with BRAF V600Emutation, by MTT assay. Terpinen-4-ol showed anti-proliferativeproperties at 0.05% concentration and induced death ratebetween 50-60% at concentrations of 0.1 % on the severalmelanoma cells tested but did not decrease the elevatedpERK1/2 levels on these cells. On the contrary, Ý-Terpinene didnot show activity at these concentrations. On the other hand, theco-treatment with 0.05 % Terpinen-4-ol increased the BRAFinhibition-induced cell death of Vemurafenib (Vf). Moreover, thisterpene diminished the viability of A375 and Lu1205 Vf-resistantcells, which indicated that Terpinen-4-ol could improve thetreatment of these types of melanomas that do not respond totherapy with BRAF inhibitors. Altogether, these results suggestthat OvEO has anti-tumor activity and Terpinen-4-ol could be animportant active principle of this essential oil to induce the deathof tumor cells.