Chemopharmacological prospection of Ocotea cymbarum (H.B.K.) Nees. (Lauraceae) in the Search for Compounds with Cytotoxic Action
In the present work, chemo-pharmacologic prospecting was carried out with Ocotea cymbarum (H. B. K.) Nees. (Lauraceae) in the search for compounds with cytotoxic action. For this, the hexane extract of leaves was fractionated by chromatography and two neolignans were isolated: I – dehydrodieugenol B and II – dehydrodieugenol, whose structures were confirmed by ¹H and ¹³C nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and mass spectrometry. Both compounds are originated by oxidative coupling of eugenol via C-O bond or C-C bond, respectively. To elucidate possible structure-activity relationships, eugenol and two neolignans were tested in breast cancer lines: MCF7 and MDA-MB-231 and the results obtained show that oxidative coupling C-O is fundamental for the activity, since compound I presented IC50 values of 169.87 and 173.75 microM, for the lines MCF7 and MDA-MB-231, respectively, while compound II and eugenol presented IC50 higher than 300 microM. The type of cell death induced by compound I in MCF7 cells was evaluated using annexin and propidium iodide using flow cytometry