. SELECTIVITY OF SYNTHETIC STILBENES

AGAINST HUMAN BREAST CANCER CELL LINES

 

Kathleen J. Jalani ¹, Irmaizatussyehdany Buniyamin ², Ibtisam Abdul Wahab ^2,

Lim Siong Meng ¹, Kalavathy Ramasamy ¹ & Jean Frédéric Faizal Weber ²

 

¹ Collaborative and Drug Discovery Research (CDDR) Group, Pharmacology and Toxicology

Research Laboratory, ² Institute of Analysis of Herbal Remedies (Institut Kajian Ubat

Semulajadi, iKUS), Faculty of Pharmacy, Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM),

 Shah Alam, Selangor Darul Ehsan.

 

The incidence rate of breast cancers is twice more than that of colorectal and cervical cancers causing it to be the lead cancers in Malaysia (WHO, 2005). Breast cancer is a result of multiple environmental factors, estrogen, folate deficiency, abnormal growth factor and inherited defects. Therefore, in the present study the selectivity of stilbenes were tested against three different types of breast cancer cells (MDA468, MDA231 and T47D cell lines). Both MDA468 and MDA231 have the epidermal growth factor (EGF) and the transforming growth factor alpha (TGF alpha). However, only MDA468 expresses both receptors. Meanwhile T47D only express WNT7B oncogene. Ten synthetic stilbenes were tested for cytotoxic test against these cell lines. All compounds underwent Heck reaction and after chromatographic purification, molecular structures of the compounds were carefully identified using NMR spectroscopy. The stilbenes were dissolved in DMSO and tested against the cell lines at concentrations 0.01-100 μM. After 72 hours of incubation, the MTT assay was performed. The dose response curve was plotted according to data read by ELISA microplate reader. All the stilbenes were found to exhibit lower cytotoxic activity in MDA468 but not in both MDA 231 and T47D. In conclusion, the stilbenes were more selective towards MDA468 compared to MDA231 and T47D cell lines.