Cytotoxic Effect of Iphinoe: A Marine Natural Product on LNCaP Prostate Cancer Cells

Cytotoxic Effect of Iphinoe: A Marine Natural Product on LNCaP Prostate Cancer Cells

Prostate cancer is one of the most common forms of cancer among men in the United States. It is estimated that one in every three men will develop prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia, among them one in six will progress to carcinoma of the prostate. Surgery, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy are commonly sought-after treatments for prostate cancer. However, recently there has been a growing number of discoveries reported in favor of the chemopreventative abilities of natural products. Therefore, the primary focus of this study was to determine the cytotoxic effect of Iphinoe extract (IE) from marine cyanobacteria, on LNCaP prostate cancer cells. During our experiments, the LNCaP cells were grown in a 96-well cell culture plate with RPMI-1640 medium containing 10% Fetal Bovine Serum (FBS) and 1000 units/ml of Penicillin-Streptomycin. The IE was added to the culture plates at varying concentrations [1-10 μL/mL] and the cells were incubated for 24 hours. At the end of incubation, the cytotoxicity was determined by performing MTT assay. The results from our experiments showed that with an increase in the concentration of the IE, there was a significant decrease in the survival of the LNCaP cells. From this preliminary study, a significant level of cytotoxic effects exerted by the IE against LNCaP prostate cancer cells is confirmed. Further experiments are underway to determine some of the underlying mechanisms that may be mediating the cytotoxic effects of IE (This project was supported by the Royal Dames of Cancer Research, Ft. Lauderdale, FL).