Abstract
Alizarin has been reported to have an antigenotoxic activity along with an inhibitory effect on the tumor cell growth of human colon carcinoma cells. Alizarin was biotransformed into an O-methoxide derivative using O-methyltransferase from Streptomyces avermitilis MA4680 (SaOMT2) to enhance its bioefficacy. The biotransformed product was extracted, purified, and characterized using various chromatographic and spectroscopic analyses, and confirmed to be an alizarin 2-O-methoxide. The antiproliferative activity of the compound against gastric cancer cells (AGS), uterine cervical cancer (Hela), liver cancer (HepG2), and normal cell lines was investigated. Alizarin 2-O-methoxide showed an inhibitory effect on all three cancer-cell lines at very low concentrations, from 0.078 µM, with no cytotoxicity against 267B1 (human prostate epithelial) and MRC-5 (normal human fetal lung fibroblast).
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Acknowledgements
This research was supported by a grant from the National Research Foundation of Korea to RPP (NRF-2017R1C1B5018056), the Next-Generation BioGreen 21 Program JKS (SSAC, grant#: PJ013137), and YIP (SSAC, grant#: PJ013206).
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Nguyen, T.T.H., Han, J.M., Jung, H.J. et al. Regio-specific biotransformation of alizarin to alizarin methoxide with enhanced cytotoxicity against proliferative cells. J Ind Microbiol Biotechnol 47, 537–542 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10295-020-02286-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10295-020-02286-4