Abstract

Procyanidins have attracted some attention due to their demonstrated chemopreventive action, a relatively new and promising strategy to prevent cancer. Breast cancer is one of the leading causes of death in women worldwide and its treatment needs improvements. The aim of this work was to verify the procyanidin dimmer B2 cytotoxic effect to MCF-7 human breast cancer cells. MCF-7 cells were cultured in RPMI medium, containing 20% fetal bovine serum and antibiotics in a CO 2 chamber. The cells were treated with different concentrations of B2 and its cytotoxic potential was assessed by the sulforhodamine B assay, morphologically through haematoxylin-eosin staining and by DNA fragmentation analysis. The significance of differences between experimental conditions was determined using the ANOVA test, followed by the Tukey test when P<0.05. Cell proliferation decreased in a concentration and time-dependent manner upon procyanidin dimmer B2 treatment, being 19.20 μM the IC 50 . Procyanidin dimmer B2 treatment displayed concentration and time-dependent decline in MCF-7 cells compared to control and also induced morphological alterations compatible with cell-death induction. Cell condensation and cell diameter decreased (3.5 folds compared to control cells), after 48 h cell-exposure to 50 μM procyanidin dimmer B2, but the DNA ladder formation was not observed. In conclusion, our results demonstrated that procyanidin dimmer B2 exhibits cytotoxic activity to MCF-7 cells and it could be a potential antineoplastic agent. Further studies are necessary to clarify the procyanidin dimmer B2 mechanism of action. The evaluation of biological efficacy of individual components is an important step towards drug discovery and development.