Abstract
Orange is among the most widely used products in the global food industry. Waste from this industry could be a good source of raw materials for pectin extraction. The utility of pectin in various fields, in particular pharmaceuticals, has been widely demonstrated. Its stimulate the development of various transformation processes to increase the bioavailability of pectic oligosaccharides and increase their effectiveness. In this study, an agricultural by-product that is widely distributed in Algeria—orange peels—was valorized by extracting the pectin from it. The antiproliferative effect of this pectin on cancer cells was then investigated. The pectin extraction procedure was optimized by trialing different protocols and adjusting several parameters. The optimal extraction procedure involved acid hydrolysis of the orange peels after the removal of essential oils through hydrodistillation. Protocols for modifying pectin chemically (by altering the pH) and physically (via gamma irradiation) were developed. Physicochemical characterization of the resulting modified forms of pectin was carried out by determining the degree of esterification using Fourier-transform infrared spectrometry (FTIR) and the solubility of the pectin in water. The antiproliferative effects of the pectins on laryngeal cancer cells (HEp2) in vitro were assessed using the sulforhodamine B (SRB) cytotoxicity assay. Pectin-induced cell death was observed by fluorescence microscopy after the cells had been stained with acridine orange. The strongest proapoptotic activity towards HEp2 cells was observed after 72 h of contact with chemically modified and irradiated pectin from orange peel. A cancer cell mortality rate of 95% was achieved using this modified pectin, as was a IC50 of 3.18 mg/ml, which was considerably lower than the IC50 for healthy cells. In conclusion, our results show the remarkable proapoptotic effect of chemically modified and irradiated orange peel pectin on a laryngeal cancer cell line, implying that it could be a good candidate for new cancer therapies.
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This study was financially supported by the Nuclear Research Center of Algiers (CRNA).
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HH-A, KA-O, and AN carried out the experiment, analyzed and interpreted the data, and wrote the manuscript. KA contributed to sample preparation. AN and AB helped to supervise the data analysis. AD-K supervised and defined the findings of this work and revised the manuscript.
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Communicated by Philippe Michaud, Chief Editor.
This paper was selected from the 2nd Euro-Mediterranean Conference for Environmental Integration (EMCEI), Tunisia 2019.
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Hamai-Amara, H., Abdoun-Ouallouche, K., Nacer-Khodja, A. et al. Optimization of the extraction of orange peel pectin and evaluation of its antiproliferative activity towards HEp2 cancer cells. Euro-Mediterr J Environ Integr 5, 43 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41207-020-00179-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41207-020-00179-7