EFFECT OF BROMINE ATOMS NUMBER ON THE CYTOTOXICITY OF TWO 2-FURYLETHYLENE DERIVATIVE SUBSTANCES IN NORMAL AND TUMORAL CELL LINES.

The study was performed to investigate the effect of bromine atoms number present in two tested substances derivatives of 2-furylethylene on cell proliferation. The substances carrying one or two Br atoms were coded as MA and G1 respectively. The neutral red uptake (NRU) assay and mitotic index (MI) were used for this purpose. The presence of two bromine atoms on the molecule of G1 inhibited markedly the cytotoxicity of this composite. For CHO cell line, the IC50 values were 256.6 μM for G1 and 134.5 μM for MA; whereas in SK MEL-3 (human melanoma) cell line, the IC50 were 413.4 μM and 264.1 μM for G1 and MA respectively. The IC50 values obtained in both cell lines were higher than 100 μM and showed no specificity for tumoral cells. The MI obtained with the G1 composite showed no significant differences with phytohaemoglutinine used as positive control. The anti-proliferative effect and MI were related with the number of bromine atoms on the molecules assayed. Another experiment was conducted with the MA product to obtain information about the acute oral toxicity class methods. The tested compound was classified in the 3th toxicity class with a fixed LD (50) cut-off value of 200 mg/kg of body weight.