Evaluation of anti-proliferative and antioxidant potential of tomato extract against melanoma

Abstract Melanoma is a form of skin cancer occurring prevalently, in fair-skinned and lighthaired person; its incidence is constantly increasing and in Italy is the second most frequent cancer males under 50 and third most frequent in female under 50 years. Increasing evidences are demonstrating that antioxidants from vegetables have both antriproliferative activity and ratio-sensiting property on cancer cell. Here, we will investigate the anti-proliferative and ratio-sensitizing potential of polyphenolic fraction from different tomato cultivars in melanoma cells lines. Aim of this work is to expand the existing knowledge on the effects of anti-oxidants and antiproliferative on melanoma cancer cells. The melanoma cancer cell line we used for this study is M14 with mutation in the BRAF gene which is involved in cancer drug resistance. Polyphenolic fraction obtained from our tomatoes extracts has been examined for identification of polyphenols by High Performance Liquid Chromatography technology, and we will study the effects of these compounds on the main pathways to be deregulated in cancer (Rb2, p21/Cip1 and p27/Kip1), according with our published results. Cytotoxicity assay, western blot, qRT-PCR, cell cycle analysis and will be performed to study the impact of these compouds on melanoma cells biology. In the second part of this work we evaluated also the capacity to inhibition of UV-A induced ROS generation in fibroblast cell by tomato extract and the ability to screen UV light and to reduce the harm to DNA caused by free oxygen radicals.