Chemical characterization, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and cytotoxic properties of bee venom collected in Northeast Portugal

Abstract

Bee venom (BV) or apitoxin is a complex mixture of substances with reported biological activity. In the present work, five bee venom samples obtained from Apis mellifera iberiensis from the Northeast Portugal (two different apiaries) were chemically characterized and evaluated for their antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and cytotoxic properties. The LC/DAD/ESI-MS n analysis of the samples showed that melittin was the most abundant compound, followed by phospholipase A2 and apamin. All the samples revealed antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activity but without a direct relation with any of the individual chemical components identified.The results highlight that there are specific concentrations (present in BV5) in which these compounds are more active. The BV samples showed similar cytotoxicity for all the tested tumour cell lines (MCF-7, NCI-H460, HeLa and HepG2), being MCF-7 and HeLa the most susceptible ones. Nevertheless, the studied samples seem to be suitable to treat breast, hepatocellular and cervical carcinoma because at the active concentrations, the samples were not toxic for non-tumour cells (PLP2). Regarding the non-small cell lung carcinoma, BV should be used under the toxic concentration for non-tumour cells. Overall, the present study corroborates the enormous bioactive potential of BV being the first report on samples from Portugal.

Honeybee venom: influence of collection on quality and cytotoxicity

“…Fraction between 15 and 10KDa indicated A2 phospholipase content (11kDa), presenting around 32% for type 1 and 2. Low molecular weight peptides such as melittin, considered a quality marker of apitoxin (SOBRAL et al, 2016;GAJSKI et al, 2013;YILMAZ et al, 2016) is present in similar amounts in both forms of analyzed beneficiations.…”

“…Melittin is the main constituent of apitoxin (SOBRAL et al, 2016). It has a low molecular weight (2.85kDa) representing about 40-50% of apitoxin dry weight (GAJSKI et al, 2013;YILMAZ et al, 2016), where it synergistically acts with phospholipase A2 (molecular weight 11kDa) which represents 11% of apitoxin dry weight (FERREIRA JUNIOR et al, 2010).…”

“…Apitoxins are produced and secreted through a gland (acid gland) located in the posterior region of the Apis mellífera bee's abdomen, containing a complex mixture of substances with biological activity (ORŠOLIĆ, 2012;DANNEELS et al, 2015;SOBRAL et al, 2016) composed of enzymes, peptides, amino acids and other compounds (SCIANI et al, 2010;FERREIRA-JUNIOR et al, 2010). Apitoxin constituents have been used as analgesic, anticoagulant and anti-inflammatory agents for treating chronic diseases such as arthritis, rheumatism, tendinitis, bursitis, fibrosis, multiple sclerosis (SOBRAL et al, 2016), and antineoplastic (ORŠOLIĆ, 2012), and has also been recently studied for its anti-acne (HAN et al, 2016) and antifungal actions (LEE, 2016).…”

Therapeutic Properties of Bioactive Compounds from Different Honeybee Products

“…A number of anticancer effects have been reported, together with antimutagenic, antinociceptive, and radioprotective properties. Approved pharmaceutical use has been introduced, while attempts at validating clinical treatment for chronic pain have been made (Moreno and Giralt, 2015; Sobral et al, 2016). However, different bee venom constituents are allergenic and in hypersensitive people bee sting can arrive to produce fatal outcome (Gelder et al, 1996).…”

Detailed phytochemical characterization and bioactive properties of Myrtus nivelii Batt & Trab

“…The evaluation of the anti-inflammatory properties was performed according to the previously described method by Sobral et al 18 For the determination of nitric oxide, a Griess Reagent System kit was used, which contains sulfanilamide, NED and nitrite solutions. The nitrite produced was determined by measuring the optical density at 515 nm, using an ELX800 microplate reader (Bio-Tek Instruments, Inc; Winooski, VT, USA) and was compared to the standard calibration curve.…”