Citotoxicity and uptake of mercury by human mammary cells

AVILA MANIERO, MARIANGELES; SHORTREDE, J.; FANELLI, MARIEL; WUILLOUD, RODOLFO G.

Chascomús

Encuentro; 4th Latin American Meeting on Biological Inorganic Chemistry (LABIC) y 5th Argentinean Workshop of Bioinorganic Chemistry; 2014

Society of Biological Inorganic Chemistry

Mercury is a widespread pollutant and one of the most toxic heavy metal, classified as 3th class carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). Mercury chloride (HgCl2), falling into the subclass of bivalent cationic metals, is considered a metalloestrogen because it may activate estrogens receptor (ER). Moreover, metallostrogen effects of Hg have not been investigated as cadmium. Since Hg remains a serious threat to human health, it is an important goal to study the effects of this metal on biological systems. MCF-7 mammary cells were the best study model to use because they are positive for ER, and a good contrast for this group were MCF-10A cells, as a control, because they are negative for ER. The aims of this work were to determine the viability of MCF-7 and MCF-10A cells after a 3-hours treatment with HgCl2, testing for possible differences in Hg uptake by both cell lines. This work intends to open future metallomics studies of mercury in MCF-type cells.