Anti-tumor activities of auricularia polytricha extracts in hepatocellular carcinoma cell line (HepG2) and breast cancer cell lines (MCF-7 AND MDA-MB-231)

Abstract

Cancer is the disease that happens to occur in a high number of new cases each year. Even the choice of treatment is developing, but the adverse effects on cancer therapeutic drugs still challenging. To investigate the antitumor activities of Auricularia polytricha (AP) mushroom extract and active compounds, human cancer cell lines such as Hepatocellcular (HepG2) and Breast cancer cell lines (MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231) were interested. The crude hexane extract of AP (APH) and crude ethanol extract of AP (APE) were prepared by maceration and Soxhlet extraction, respectively. Both APE and APH were investigated for their compound compositions by GC-MS. We found that APH contains almost twice the quantity of ergosterol (ER) compared to APE. The separation of APH was conducted by HPLC to check the characteristic of ER in APH. Moreover, four compound fractions (F1, F2, F3, and ER) were separated by PREP-LC with TLC screening. Cell viability assay after 24 hours treatment of the cancer cells with APH APE and Doxorubicin (an antitumor drug) using MTT were observed. We found that APH exerted a higher effect on all cancer cell lines (HepG2, MCF-7, and MDA-MB-231) by showing IC50 at 0.06 ± 0.02, 0.06 ± 0.01 and 0.02 ± 0.01 mg/mL, respectively. Moreover, apoptosis, cell cycle, migration and invasion assay were tested with APH (12, 25 and 50 µg/ml) and ER (6, 12 and 25 µM). The results showed that the high doses of APH and ER induced apoptosis, migration and invasion. However, both APH and ER could not significantly induce cell cycle arrest. In addition, in silico study of ER as a major compound found in the extract and gelatinase (MMP-2) as the enzyme that involves an invasion process was performed. The result displayed the mild binding of ER to MMP-2 (-32.7324 kcal/mol) with key interactions in the active site of MMP-2. We concluded that APH and ER revealed the antitumor activities leading to the future development for drug discovery of this edible mushroom and ergosterol.