Bangladesh Journal of Pharmacology Volume: 10; Number 3; Year 2015 Cite this article as: Ponnuswamy S, Kannaiyan S, Venugopal G, Manikkam R. Antiproliferative activity of yellow pigment from forest soil Streptomyces sp SFA5 against breast cancer cell line MCF-7. Bangladesh J Pharmacol. 2015; 10: 714-15. Antiproliferative activity of yellow pigment from forest soil Streptomyces sp SFA5 against breast cancer cell line MCF-7 Sir, Cancer is a dreadful non-communicable human disease, increasing with changing life style, nutrition and global warming. Cancer treatments do not have potent medicine as the currently available drugs are causing adverse effects in some instances. In this context, the natural products derived from medicinal plants have gained significance in the treatment of cancer (Sithranga Boopathy and Kathiresan, 2010). Actino- bacteria are the promising source for bioactive metabo- lites including anticancer agents (Berdy, 2012). Present study is aimed to determine the antiproliferative activity of yellow pigment isolated from forest soil Streptomyces sp SFA5 against breast cancer cell line. Soluble yellow pigment from forest soil Streptomyces sp SFA5 was produced by agar surface fermentation using yeast extract malt extract (YEME) broth. After 10 days of incubation at 28ºC, soluble pigment from the agar medium was extracted by solid liquid extraction method using ethyl acetate (1:2 ratio) (Radhakrishnan et al., 2014). Antiproliferative activity of crude pigment against breast cancer cell line MCF-7 was determined by MTT assay described by Carmichael et al., (1987). Pigment as well as the standard drug doxorubicin were tested in triplicate at concentrations such as 1, 10, 50, 100 and 250 µg/mL. Cell viability was calculated by adopting the following formula: % of cell viability = Treated cells / Control cells x 100 Antiproliferative activity of yellow pigment produced from Streptomyces sp SFA5 and the standard drug doxorubicin on MCF-7 breast cancer cell line was given in Table I. Among the concentrations tested, maximum reduction in viability (Figure 1) was observed at 250 µg/mL concentration of crude pigment (10% viability) and doxorubicin (2% viability). Shekar Ponnuswamy1, Sathishkumar Kannaiyan1, Gopikrishnan Venugopal2 and Radhakrishnan Manikkam2 1Department of Chemical Engineering, SSN College of Engineering, Tamil Nadu, India; 2Centre for Drug Discovery and Development, Sathyabama University, Tamil Nadu, India. Corresponding author: email: mrkactinos@yahoo.com A Journal of the Bangladesh Pharmacological Society (BDPS) Bangladesh J Pharmacol 2015; 10: 714-715 Journal homepage: www.banglajol.info Abstracted/indexed in Academic Search Complete, Agroforestry Abstracts, Asia Journals Online, Bangladesh Journals Online, Biological Abstracts, BIOSIS Previews, CAB Abstracts, Current Abstracts, Directory of Open Access Journals, EMBASE/Excerpta Medica, Google Scholar, HINARI (WHO), International Pharmaceutical Abstracts, Open J-gate, Science Citation Index Expanded, SCOPUS and Social Sciences Citation Index ISSN: 1991-0088; DOI: 10.3329/bjp.v10i3.24151 Letter to the Editor Table I Antiproliferative activities yellow pigment and dox- orubicin on MCF-7 cell lines by the MTT assay % of cell viability Concentration (µg/mL) Yellow pigment SFA5 Doxorubicin 1 98.0 ± 2.0 91.3 ± 1.5 10 79.0 ± 3.6 60.0 ± 4.0 50 35.3 ± 5.1 23.6 ± 4.0 100 24.0 ± 5.2 17.3 ± 4.7 250 13.6 ± 3.2 1.6 ± 0.5 Figure 1: Antiproliferative activity of yellow pigment SFA5 and standard drug doxorubicin on MCF-7 cells Untreated MCF-7 cell line MCF-7 treated with SFA5 (250 µg/mL) MCF-7 treated with doxorubicin (250 µg/mL) mailto:mrkactinos@yahoo.com http://www.bioxbio.com/if/html/BANGL-J-PHARMACOL.html References Berdy J. Thoughts and facts about antibiotics: Where we are now and where we are heading. J Antibiot. 2012; 65: 385-95. Carmichael J, William G, Graff D, Gazdar AF. Evaluation of a tetrazolium-based semiautomated colorimetric assay: Assess- ment of chemosensitivity testing. Cancer Res. 1987; 47: 936–42. Radhakrishnan M, Anuradha Raman V, Bharathi S, Balaguru- nathan R and Vanaja Kumar. Anti MRSA and antitubercular activity of phenoxazinone containing molecule from Borra caves Streptomyces sp. BCA1. Int J Pharma Sci Res. 2014; 5: 5342-48. Sithranga Boopathy N, Kathiresan K. Anticancer drugs from marine flora: An overview. J Oncol. 2010; 214186. 715 Bangladesh J Pharmacol 2015; 10: 714-715 DatePrinted: This article was downloaded by you on: Aug 17, 2015