Anti‐adipogenic activities of pheophorbide a and pyropheophorbide a isolated from wild bitter gourd (Momordica charantia L. var. abbreviata Seringe) in vitro

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The wild bitter gourd (WBG) is a commonly consumed vegetable in Asia that has antioxidant and hypoglycemic properties. The present study aimed to investigate the anti-adipogenic activities of isolated compounds from WBG on 8-day differentiated cultures of 3 T3-L1 adipocytes that were then stained with Oil Red O (ORO) or diamidino-2-phenylindole (DAPI).RESULTS: ORO stains of the methanol extracts of de-seeded HM86 cultivar of WBG (WBG-M) and the ethyl acetate fractions (WBG-M-EA) showed anti-adipogenic activities against differentiated adipocytes. Two chlorophyll-degraded compounds, pheophorbide a (1) and pyropheophorbide a (2), were isolated from WBG-M-EA. Treatments with 1 (5, 10, and 20 ∼mol L −1 ) and 2 (2.5, 5, and 10 ∼mol L −1 ) showed dose-dependent reductions in lipid accumulations and reduced nuclear DAPI stains in differentiated 3 T3-L1 adipocytes. The concentrations for 50% inhibition against lipid accumulations of 1 and 2, respectively, were 16.05 and 7.04 ∼mol L −1 . Treatments with 1 and 2 showed enhanced lactate dehydrogenase release in the first 4-day cell mitotic clonal expansions during the differentiating cultural processes, although the effect was less on the non-differentiating cultural processes. Thus, 1 and 2 were more toxic to differentiating adipocytes than to non-differentiated pre-adipocytes, which partly resulted in anti-adipogenic activities with lowered lipid accumulations.CONCLUSION: Both 1 and 2 showed anti-adipogenic activities in cell models. These chlorophyll-degraded compounds commonly exist in several vegetables during storage or edible seaweeds, which will provide resources for further investigations aiming to test anti-obesity in animal studies.

Effects of Sulforaphane and Chlorophyl a in a Western Diet-Induced Obesity Model

“…Furthermore, both SFN and Chlo.a supplementation increased liver oxidative stress but counterbalanced this with an increase in SOD activity. Although some studies have reported the anti-obesogenic potential of SFN [17,[22][23][24] or Chlo.a [28][29][30][31][32], in the present study, these effects are not as evident.…”

“…Chlorophyll compounds have been reported to present some bioactive activities such as, anti-oxidant, anti-cancer, anti-inflammatory, neuroprotective effects, among others [27]. Furthermore, it has been reported that chlorophyll a (Chlo.a), the most abundant photosynthetic pigment, together with its derivatives, has potential antiobesogenic actions in both in vitro and in vivo studies [28][29][30][31][32]. Wang and colleagues [32] demonstrated that the addition of chlorophyll extracts decreased the release rate of free fatty acids and changed the fatty acid composition of soybean oil emulsions at the gastrointestinal system level using an in vitro simulation.…”