Effects of a Novel Hydroalcoholic Extract of Lens Culinaria Against the Dexamethasone-Induced bone loss and Chemotherapy Cytotoxicity in Murine and Human Cells.

Lens culinaria showed nutritional health benefit in humans. Here, we evaluated the effects of a novel hydroalcoholic extract (70% ethanol, 1E030521DIPFARMTDA) from Lens culinaria (Terre di Altamura SRL, Altamura BA) to prevent cytotoxic damage from chemotherapeutic agents such as staurosporine, a non-selective inhibitor of tyrosine kinases, cisplatin the antineoplastic alkylating agent, doxorubicin as antimitotic, and the glucocorticoid dexamethasone targeting osteoblast. On renal Hek293, staurosporine caused a significant reduction from -20% to -60% (p <0.05) in cell proliferation and the extract was significantly effective in bringing these values between 70% and 100% (p <0.05) with comparable activity to that of diazoxide. Also, in the clonogenic assay, the extract was effective to prevent the reduction of colonies numbers caused by staurosporine. Cisplatin caused a slight reduction of -10% in Hek293 cell proliferation and a significant reduction of -30% in SHSY5Y cell proliferation respectively after 48 and 72 hours of incubation time. In both cases, the extract showed a significant cytoprotective effect. On the primary culture of murine osteoblasts, doxorubicin reduced survival by -30%, dexamethasone reduced it by -15%. The extract was significantly effective in preventing cell count-reduction induced by dexamethasone but not by doxorubicin. A UV/VIS spectroscopy analysis was carried out. We obtained three peaks at the wavelength of 350, 260 and 190 nm which correspond to families of compounds such as flavonoids, proanthocyanins and salicylates. Therefore, this novel extract prevented the cytotoxic damage induced by cisplatin and staurosporine on the renal cell line, and by cisplatin also on the neuronal cell line by clonogenic assay and DNA staining. The extract was significantly effective in preventing the reduction of cell proliferation induced by dexamethasone in murine osteoblasts suggesting of potential use in bone loss diseases. It is not yet clear which of these families molecules composing the extract is responsible for these effects or if there is a synergistic action.