The Aloysia polystachya extract reduces malignant tumor growth

MILENI SOARES MACHADO; ALEJANDRA G. PALMA; LAURA C. PANELO; LEONARDO A. PAZ; FRANCISCO D. ROSA; MARÍA C. LIRA; PABLO AZURMENDI; MARÍA F. RUBIO; GUIDO LENZ; ALEJANDRO J. URTREGER; MÓNICA A. COSTAS

Mar del Plata

Congreso; LXIV Reunión Científica de la Sociedad Argentina de Investigación Clínica (SAIC); 2019

Sociedad Argentina de Investigación Clínica (SAIC)

We have previously demonstrated that Aloysia polystachya (AP) extract induces apoptosis, and also the sensitization of human and mouse colorectal cancer cell lines to chemotherapeutic drugs in vitro. Moreover, our experiments demonstrated that Cancer Stem Cells (CSC) populations are a target for AP-induced cytotoxic effects. The aim of this work was to investigate the in vivo effects of AP extract, alone or combined with the chemotherapeutic drug, 5-Fluorouracil (5-FU). Therefore, male BALB/c mice, 8-12 weeks old were randomly divided into six groups. All of them were subcutaneously inoculated at the right dorsal flank with 2×106 CT26 cells. Once the tumor was detected, animals were treated twice a week (days 14, 17, 21, 24 and 28) with an intraperitoneal injection of: AP1, AP2, AP3, 5-FURA, 5mg/kg previously determined as poorly effective in vivo, AP2+5-FURA in a sub-effective dose or remained without treatment. Normal animals, not inoculated with CT26 cells were also used as control for histological analysis. The tumor size was determined twice a week. After 30 days, the mice were sacrificed and necropsied. The histopathology of tumors and the liver sections was performed by staining with hematoxylin and eosin. We found that while 5-FURA was not effective for inhibiting the tumor growth, its combined treatment with AP2 significantly inhibited the tumor growth in all the treated animals (p 0.05; tukey test). Moreover, we found that AP treatments were capable to inhibit the tumor growth respect to control, even in the absence of 5-FURA chemotherapy (p 0.05; tukey test).Concerning the histopathological analysis of tumor sections, some necrosis area was observed only in animals treated with AP2 and AP2+5-FURA, while the hepatic parenchyma shown a preserved architecture, similar to that observed in normal control animals. These results strongly suggest that AP extracts could be not only a promissory and useful tool to increase chemotherapy sensitivity, but also an anti-cancer treatment, by applying alone.