Prodigiosin is a secondary metabolite, with red pigmentation, produced by Serratia marcescens. Red pigment is a natural
alkaloid whose chemical structure has three
pyrrole rings.
Prodigiosin has been described for several
biological activities, including antitumor, inducing apotosis in T and B lymphocytes. This work aimed to evaluate the cytotoxic activity of
prodigiosin in NCHI-292, HEp-2, MCF-7 and HL-60 tumor cell lines. The red pigment was isolated from Serratia marcescens UFPEDA 398 biomass whose fractions were previously separated by column chromatography, purified, identified and further characterized by GC-MS and compared with the computerized library of m/z values. The pigment corresponded to
prodigiosin with maximum absorption at 534 nm, molecular weight 323 and structural formula C20H25N3O. During the
prodigiosin purification process a purple absorbance fraction at 272.65 nm was also observed. Significant cytotoxic effects of
prodigiosin were evidenced for NCHI-292, Hep-2, MCF-7 and HL-60 tumor cell lines. The isolated purple fraction had no cytotoxic effect (IC50 11.3 µg/mL) when compared to
prodigiosin (IC50 3.4 µg/mL) for the tumor cell lines studied. The MCF-7 strain was slightly more pigment resistant (IC50 5.1 µg/mL). Therefore, further studies will be needed to elucidate the antitumor mechanisms of
prodigiosin action against
tumor strains from flow cytometry tests. However, although these data are preliminary, it was evidenced that
prodigiosin showed cytotoxic activity in tumor cell lines suggesting promising antitumor properties. In this sense, future studies on the cytotoxic and genotoxic effects of
prodigiosin produced by S. marcecsens UFPEDA 398 are suggested.