Atividade antineoplásica do extrato glicólico comercial de Aloe vera (L.) Burm. f. em linhagens de câncer de mama

Abstract

Since the beginning of humanity, plants has been used for medicinal purposes to treat, cure and prevent various diseases. A plant widely used by the population, both for cosmetic and medicinal purposes, is Aloe vera, popularly known as babosa. Numerous studies report that babosa’s leaf has many biological activities, including anticancer, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, immunomodulatory, hepatoprotective, antiulcer and anti-diabetic. Nowadays, cancer is one of the biggest causes of death, and breast one is the second most common cancer overall. Given this, there is a constant demand for the development of new effective and affordable anticancer drugs, and investigation of the antineoplastic potential of the glycolic extract of Aloe vera could be interesting. Therefore, this work aims to evaluate an antineoplastic activity of the commercial glycolic extract of Aloe vera, through the treatment of breast tumor cells (MDA-MB-231 and MCF-7) and non-tumor cells (Vero), to different concentrations of extract and for different time intervals. Cell viability was evaluated through WST-1 proliferation and the Trypan Blue exclusion assays, while genotoxicity was assessed by the comet assay. Aloe vera extract was cytotoxic to all cell lineages for the two highest concentrations tested. Citotoxicity was also observerd for tumor cells, at the concentration of 12.5% in the longest treatment time (24 h) (p <0.05). In genotoxicity tests, it was observed that the cell lineage MDA-MB-231 has an increasing damage rate after 24 hours; while the other cells appear to repair the initial damage, indicating a viability recovery, but not enough to match the control. These results suggest a potential antineoplastic effect of Aloe vera extract with concentration 12.5% in the longer exposure time (24 h) in breast cancer cells