Sulfated arabinogalactans from green marine algae showed anti-herpetic activity without eukaryotic cytotoxicity

PUJOL, CARLOS A; CIANCIA, MARINA; MATOS, MARINA NADIA; ARATA, PAULA X; FERNANDEZ, PAULA VIRGINIA

San Martín, Provincia de Buenos Aires

Simposio; 3rd Argentinian Simposium in Glycobiology; 2019

Universidad Nacional de San Martín

Sulfated polysaccharides are interesting blanks to look for biological activities with application in human health. Most of studies were focused on red algae. In this work, seven sulfated arabinogalactans with different structural features obtained from aqueous extracts form green algae were studied: Cv1 and Cv2 from Codium vermilara, Cs1 and Cs2 from Codium subantarcticum, Cf1 and Cf2 from Cladophora falklandica, and Pc1 from Penicillus capilatus. None of them showed cytotoxic activity against VERO cells, even at 1 mg/ml. The ability of fractions to inhibit VERO cell infection by Herpes Simplex Virus HSV-1 and HSV-2 was analyzed. Fractions showed a broad spectrum of inhibitory activity: Cs1 and Cv2, low; Cf2 and Cs2, moderate (IC50 112 µg/ml and 194 µg/ml); Cf1 and Pc1, higher (IC50 33 µg/ml and 44 µg/ml), while Cv1 showed the highest activity (IC50 7 µg/ml). The major structure in Cv1 was a highly sulfated pyranosic 3-linked -L-arabinan, while CF1 was also a sulfated pyranosic -L-arabinan, but the arabinose units were 4-linked and, in spite of its higher sulfate content, it was less active. This could be due to a significant amount of side chains, comprising mostly single stubs of -D-xylose linked to C2. This and other structure-activity considerations, show the importance of many structural details on the activity, not restricted to sulfate content and monosaccharide composition, but also glycosidic linkage types, sulfation sites, backbone ramifications, and so on.