The Kidney Vero-E6 Cell Line: a Suitable Model to Study the Toxicity of Microcy...

• Author(s): Menezes, Carina ; Valério, Elisabete ; Dias, Elsa
• Date: 2013
• Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.18/1174
• Origin: Repositório Científico do Instituto Nacional de Saúde
• Subject(s): Microcystin-LR; Vero Cell Line; Kidney; Cytotoxicity; Genotoxicity; Tumor Promotion; Água e Solo
• Document Type: Part of book or chapter of book
• Language: English

Description

Microcystins (MCs) are toxins produced by cyanobacteria from water environments that can induce acute and chronic effects on humans and animals, after ingestion/contact with contaminated water. This group of cyclic heptapeptides comprises approximately 80 variants, being microcystin-LR (MCLR) the most frequent and toxic variant. The studies of MCs effects on cell lines often lead to contradictory results, given the fact that distinct MC toxicity endpoints (mainly cytotoxicity and genotoxicity) have been studied in diverse cell lines (and cell clones) under distinct exposure conditions (different doses-ranges, time of exposure, MCs variants, etc). In our work with Vero-E6 cells we tested MCLR (both pure toxin and from cyanobacterial extracts of M. aeruginosa) within a wide range of concentrations (1 nM- 200 μM), using several endpoints and methodologies (cytotoxicity, morphology, genotoxicity, protein expression). In this chapter we will summarize our results and discuss the utility of Vero-E6 cell line to evaluate the toxicological properties of MCLR.