α-Pinene isolated from Schinus terebinthifolius Raddi (Anacardiaceae) induces apoptosis and confers antimetastatic protection in a melanoma model

Abstract

Malignant melanoma is one the most aggressive types of cancer and its incidence has gradually increased in the last years, accounting for about 75% of skin cancer deaths. This poor prognosis results from the tumor resistance to conventional drugs mainly by deregulation of apoptotic pathways. The aim of this work was to investigate the cell death mechanism induced by α-pinene and its therapeutic application. Our results demonstrated that α-pinene was able to induce apoptosis evidenced by early disruption of the mitochondrial potential, production of reactive oxygen species, increase in caspase-3 activity, heterochromatin aggregation, DNA fragmentation and exposure of phosphatidyl serine on the cell surface. Most importantly, this molecule was very effective in the treatment of experimental metastatic melanoma reducing the number of lung tumor nodules. This is the first report on the apoptotic and antimetastatic activity of isolated α-pinene.

Protective Effects of <i>Pinus halepensis</i> L. Essential Oil on Aspirin-induced Acute Liver and Kidney Damage in Female Wistar Albino Rats

“…Then, a-pinene is a natural compound present in the oils of many species of conifers, particularly pine trees 53 . It has been reported that a-pinene could be used for the therapy of melanoma due to its great potential to induce apoptosis on cancer cells 54 .…”

Antioxidative, anticancer and genotoxic properties of α-pinene on N2a neuroblastoma cells

“…Our results are in agreement with previous study (Wang et al 2012), which has reported that α-pinene and β-pinene isolated from Rosmarinus officinalis demonstrated strong cytotoxicity towards human ovarian cancer cell lines (SK-OV-3 and HO-8910) and human hepatocellular liver carcinoma cell line (Bel-7402) in the MTT in vitro assay. Also, Matsuo et al (2011) revealed that α-pinene was able to induce apoptosis evidenced by early disruption of the mitochondrial potential, production of reactive oxygen species, and increase in caspase-3 activity in B16F10 murine melanoma cell. An additional recent study indicated that terpinolene reduced the protein expression of AKT1 in K562 human leukemic cells and inhibited cell proliferation (Okumura et al 2012).…”

Fragrant environment with α-pinene decreases tumor growth in mice

“…Further, we did not test whether forest environment-induced tumor suppresconditions used here. Matsuo et al found that α-pinene induced apoptosis and inhibited metastasis in a melanoma model with a relatively high concentration of α-pinene (100 μg/mL = 100 mg/L) (14). In contrast, we used α-pinene at the very low concentration of 180 ng/L in air.…”