Cytotoxicity and chemical profiling of the Red Sea soft corals Litophyton arboreum

Abstract

The objective of this research was to evaluate the cytotoxic activities of the fractions and isolated compounds of the soft corals Litophyton arboreum against A549, MCF-7 and HepG2 cell lines by MTT assay method, and to chemically investigate the various metabolites of its total extract using LC-HR-ESI-MS metabolomic profiling. The metabolomic profiling revealed the presence of various metabolites, mainly sesquiterpenes and steroids reported for the first time in L. arboreum. Additionally, eight compounds (1-8) have been isolated from the n-hexane-chloroform (1:1) fraction that exhibited noticeable activity towards A549, MCF-7 and HepG2 cell lines. The steroids (5 and 6), and the sesquiterpene (1) exerted noticeable activity against A549 cell line (IC₅₀ 28.5 ± 4.4, 36.9 ± 2.9 and 67.3 ± 9.9 µM/mL, respectively) compared to etoposide as standard cytotoxic agent (IC₅₀ 48.3 ± 7.6 µM/mL). Compound 6 also exhibited cytotoxicity against MCF-7 cell line (IC₅₀ 55.3 ± 4.9 µM/mL).

Graphical Abstract

Keywords:

• Litophyton arboreum
• Nephtheidae
• metabolomic profiling
• cytotoxicity
• soft corals

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 17K08336 and KOSÉ Cosmetology Research Foundation. It was also supported by Ministry of Higher Education, Egypt through the Scientific Mission System. The authors are grateful for access to the superconducting NMR instrument and ESI-MS at Natural Science Center for Basic Research and Development (N-BARD) of the Graduate School of Biomedical and Health Sciences, Hiroshima University.