Fatty-monastrol derivatives and its cytotoxic effect against melanoma cell growth

Abstract Melanoma is the most dangerous type of skin cancer due to the occurrence of metastases. This work is aimed at studying the effects of the insertion of palmitic and oleic acid chain into monastrol in the melanoma cell line, B16F10. Cells were treated with monastrol, palmitic-monastrol or oleic-monastrol for periods of 0, 24, 48 and 72 h, and the cytotoxic effect was observed for palmitic-monastrol and oleic-monastrol after 24 h. For monastrol the effects were observed in 48 h on B16F10 cells, and in 24 h for a non-tumour cell line, melan-a. In this cell line, fatty-monastrol derivatives were cytotoxic after 24 h of exposure in the same concentrations as B16F10. However, oleic-monastrol inhibited cell growth at 20 µM only after 72 h, in contrast to the B16F10 cell line, in which oleic-monastrol inhibited cell growth at 48 h, showing that at least in this structural modification, melan-a was less sensitive than B16F10. The ability of compounds to induce apoptosis and/or necrosis was measured, and it was observed that monastrol induces apoptosis within 24 h. However, the cells treated with fatty-monastrol derivatives did not remain adhered on the well plate after 3 h of treatment. At this time point, these cells still emitted fluorescence indicating viable cells, suggesting a possible effect of palmitic- and oleic-monastrol in the adhesion proteins found on the cell membrane.