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MGBG–cisplatin combination chemotherapy against breast cancer

Worldwide, it is estimated that more than one million women are diagnosed with breast cancer every year, representing 14% of female cancer deaths [1], about 4,500 new cases being detected each year in Portugal. In the present study, the compound metylglyoxal bis(guanylhydrazone) (MGBG) [2], an inhibitor of S-adenosyl-L-methionine descarboxylase (SAMdc), was investigated as a potencial anti-cancer agent towards the breast cancer cell line MCF-7 and the non-carcinogenic, non-immortalized, human foreskin fibroblast cells BJ. The results (MTT assay) evidenced that the effect of MGBG against the MCF-7 cells is dose and time dependent, revealing a significant cell viability loss (ca. 90% at 72 h, for a 50 μM dosage). Since its effect was not shown to be reversible, this compound appears to be quite effective in this line. In fact, compared to cisplatin (cDDP), a commonly used drug in clinical practice, MGBG provided a larger cytotoxicity in the same concentration range. Similarly, a slight synergistic effect was verified for these two compounds – ca. 93% at 72 h, for an MGBG(50 μM):CDDP(10 μM) combination, while no effect was assessed on the reversibility of the cytotoxic action. Regarding the non-neoplastic BJ line, MBGB exhibited a clear reversibility of et growth-inhibiting effect, as opposed to cDDP and the MGBG:cDDP cocktails.

References

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Correspondence to Raquel F Gonsalves.

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Open Access This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Gonsalves, R.F., Marques, M.P. MGBG–cisplatin combination chemotherapy against breast cancer. BMC Proc 4 (Suppl 2), P27 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1186/1753-6561-4-S2-P27

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1753-6561-4-S2-P27

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