Cytotoxic activities of hexane, ethyl acetate and butanol extracts of marine sponges from Mauritian Waters on human cancer cell lines

The ocean is an exceptional source of natural products with many of them exhibiting novel structural features and bioactivity. As one of the most interesting phylum with respect to pharmacological active marine compounds, Poriferas have been investigated widely in the last few decades. A total of 60 organic extracts (hexane, ethyl acetate and butanol) from 20 species of marine sponges from Mauritius were screened at 50 μg/ml in an in vitro screening assay against 9 human cancer cell lines. From these tested extracts, many exhibited pronounced cytotoxic effect at least in one of the cell lines and cell type cytotoxic specificity was observed. 27% of ethyl acetate, 11% of hexane and 2% of butanol extracts were found to possess a cytotoxicity ≥75% on 9 different cancer cell lines with the sponges Petrosia sp. 1, Petrosia sp. 2, Pericharax heteroraphis and Jaspis sp. being the most active. Overall, the HL-60 cells were much more sensitive to most of the extracts than the other cell lines. We further evaluated the properties of the ethyl acetate (JDE) and hexane extract (JDH) of one sponge, Jaspis sp. on KB cells. JDE displayed a smaller IC50 than JDH. Clonogenic assay confirmed the antiproliferative effect of both extracts while mitochondrial membrane potential change and microscopic analysis demonstrated extracts-induced apoptosis. Treatment with 100 ng/ml of JDE led to a significant increase of cells (24 h: 4.02%; 48 h: 26.23%) in sub-G1 phase. The cytotoxic properties of the tested extracts from these sponges suggest the presence of compounds with pharmacological potential and are currently undergoing fractionation to isolate the active constituents.

► We investigated the cytotoxic effect of 60 organic extracts obtained from 20 species of marine sponges.
► We found ethyl acetate extracts to possess higher cytotoxicity than hexane and butanol extracts.
► Petrosia sp. 1, Petrosia sp. 2, Jaspis sp. and Pericharax heteroraphis were found to be the most active.
► Tested extracts suggest the presence of compounds with pharmacological potential.