Imane Charid
Charite Universiät Medzine, Germany
Title: The anti-cancer effect of methanolic extract of Pistacia lentiscus MEPL in human ovarian cancer cells
Biography
Biography: Imane Charid
Abstract
Ovarian cancer remains the most lethal gynecologic cancer in women. More than 60% were diagnosed at advanced stage and the mortality did not significantly improve over last years. The poor prognosis and high mortality show that the current therapies often fail and novel approaches urgently required in order to enhance the prognosis of the disease. In our study, we investigated the effect of the leaves of Pistacia lentiscus and Fraxinus angustifolia; two Algerian medicinal plants used as traditional medicine from 15th-16th centuries for ovarian cancer. The different extracts were obtained in different organic solvents like ethanol, methanol and acetone; and tested on two ovarian cancer cell lines A2780 and SKOV3. We determined that the methanolic extract of P. lentiscus exhibited a cytotoxic potential in A2780 and SKOV3 cells. The active extract (MEPL) induced apoptosis and cell cycle arrest in these ovarian cancer cell lines. However, the widely used cell lines SKOV-3 and A2780 were implicated as not being representative of the major HGSC subtype because of the wild-type p53 status. In order to investigate the mechanism of action (MoA) of MEPL also in patients with the most common subtype of EOC (HGS), we conducted the preclinical study using newly established primary cell lines from ascites of high grade serous ovarian cancer patients. The results showed that MEPL inhibited PI3K/AKT and MAPK/ERK signaling pathways, and decreased release of IL6 and VEGF by the malignant cells. Moreover, treatment with MEPL increased the sensitivity to chemotherapy in our primary cell lines of HGS ovarian cancer patients and might be a promising novel combination therapeutic approach on patients with this histological subtype of ovarian cancer.