Cytotoxic effects of three Persian Gulf species of Holothurians

Pharmaceutical industries around the world are struggling for finding new approaches to fight cancer and many researchers are involved in this process to find new drug candidates.

The current study aimed at investigating the new marine natural products with anticancer potential from the three Persian Gulf Holothuria sea cucumbers.

We evaluated the cytotox activity of different organs of three Holothuria sea cucumbers species (H. scabra, H. parva, and H. leucospilota) using organic extract (OE): n-Hexane (nH), ethyl acetate (E), and methanol (M). Cytotoxicity potential of three fractions was estimated using two toxicity models: brine shrimp (Artemia salina) lethality assay (BSA) and tetrazolium-based colorimetric assay (MTT) assay in human cancer cell lines (MCF-7( and normal cell lines (HeLa).

The data illustrated that toxicity depends on concentration but BSA was highest for the M extracts of cuvierian tubules (CT) organs of H. leucospilota (up to 95% at 1000 µg/ml, LC₅₀ = 616.4 μg/ml) and respiratory tree (RT) organs of H. parva (up to 86% at 1000 µg/ml, LC₅₀ = 607.2 μg/ml). Based on cell lines, the more effective extracts were noticed for E fractions of CT organs of H. leucospilota (up to 85% at 250 µg/ml, LC₅₀ = 37.25 μg/ml) against MCF-7 and for E extracts of intestine tract (IT) organs of H. parva (up to 80% at 250 µg/ml, LC₅₀ = 46.25 μg/ml) against HeLa cells. This variation indicates that the possible cytotoxic compounds in fractions are selective toxicity toward cell lines.

The data demonstrated that Holothuria species are an interesting source for discovery of drugs.