Castanea Sativa Mill. bark extract exerts chemopreventive properties triggering extrinsic apoptotic pathway in Jurkat cells

Chemoprevention represents the possibility to prevent, stop or reverse the cancerogenetic process. In this context the interest towards natural extracts has grown due to their phytochemical content. Castanea Sativa Mill. (CSM) bark extracts showed to exert positive effect in the counteraction of chronic/degenerative diseases, therefore, we evaluated its potential chemopreventive effect. Flow cytometry (FCM) analyses of Jurkat cells treated with CSM bark extract 0-500 μg/mL for 24-72h allowed to evaluate its cytotoxicity and ability to induce apoptosis. Moreover, to define if CSM bark extract was selective towards cancer cells, its cytotoxic and proapoptotic effect was evaluated in human lymphocytes (PBL) from healthy donors. CSM bark extract induced apoptosis in Jurkat cells in a dose- and time- dependent manner by activating the extrinsic pathways as evidenced by the activation of caspae 8. Moreover, at 24h treatment IC50 resulted 304 and 128 μg/mL in PBL and Jurkat cells respectively. CSM bark extract resulted a partially selective chemopreventive agent thanks to its ability to induce apoptosis in cancer cells at concentrations lower than in non-transformed cells.