2. Effect of ellagic acid and retinoic acid on endometrial cell growth

FERELLA L; RICCI A; MADANES D; SINGLA JJ; MC CORMACK B; BILOTAS M; BARAÑAO RI

Congreso; 2nd Congress of the Society of Endometriosis and Uterine Disorders (SEUD); 2016

Current treatments for endometriosis (EDT) focus on analgesic-driven pain relief, removal of implants through laparoscopic surgery and prevention of recurrence through continuous hormonal treatments. As the efficiency of these strategies remains under discussion, non-adverse effect long term therapies remain a field of strong research.Our work provides a novel approach in the treatment of this disease, taking advantage of natural products which has already shown satisfactory results in cancer research: ellagic acid (EA) and retinoic acid (RA). We propose to assess in vitro their action on one of the most relevant aspects leading to the development of EDT: the high rate of ectopic endometrial tissue proliferation.We observed that 10uM RA treatment for 24 and 48 hours significantly inhibited cell proliferation (p<0.01, p<0.05, respectively) in a human endometrial stromal cell line (T-HESC). In the same way, 24 and 48 hours 100uM EA treatment (p<0.01) and 24 hours 10uM RA treatment (p<0.001), inhibited cell proliferation in the endometrial adenocarcinoma epithelial cell line (ECC-1). We obtained similar results with stromal and epithelial primary cell cultures derived from endometrial biopsies of healthy and diseased patients (p<0.01). On the other hand, flow cytometry in 24 and 48 hours RA or EA treated ECC-1 cells, showed a tendency towards cell cycle arrest, as well as 24 hours RA treated T-HESC cells.Based on these results, we highlight the importance of further research on the mechanism of action of these natural compounds, as they may represent a novel and promising therapeutic treatment of EDT.