Adolfo Soto-Domínguez; Alfredo Piñeyro-López; Odila Saucedo-Cárdenas; Rosalba Ramírez-Durónd; Noemí Waksman de Torres & Julio Sepúlveda-Saavedra

Summary

Peroxisomicine A1 (PA1), one of the toxins isolated from seeds of plants of the Karwinskia genus, whose targets organs are the liver, kidney, and lungs. There is a selective toxicity in vitro to cancer-cell lines derived from the lungs, liver, and colon, compared to normal cell lines. PA1 caused apoptosis in several cancer-cell lines in culture. In toxic doses to rodents, it causes extensive apoptosis in the liver, kidney, and lungs. In our study we were interested in evaluating, for the first time, the morphological effects of administration of PA1 to implanted TC-1 cells and in the target organs in vivo. The TC-1 cells were cultured and injected into the hind limb of C57BL-6 mice. The animals were divided into 3 groups; those treated with four doses of 1 mg/kg each of PA1, the untreated control, and the vehicle-control groups. All mice were killed 10 days after cell implantation. Samples were obtained from TC-1 cells at the implantation site and from the liver, kidney, and lungs. The samples were processed for examination under light and electron microscopy. In the PA1-treated group, the TC-1 cells had necrosis, whereas in the control groups the tumor cells were undamaged. The target organs did not show any lesions. We demonstrated for the first time that there is a selective toxic effect of PA1 on the TC-1 cells in vivo.

KEY WORDS: Antineoplasic effect; Necrosis; Peroxisomicine A1; Selective toxicity; TC-1 cells.

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