Sulfated polysaccharides from Phaeodactylum tricornutum: isolation, structural characteristics, and inhibiting HepG2 growth activity in vitro

Microalgae, eukaryotic unicellular plants, are increasing in demand due to their use as nutraceutical and food supplements. They consisted different kinds of biologically active components such as polysaccharides. On the other hand, cancer is the leading cause of death globally. At present, there is no efficient method to cure it. Therefore, in this work, we extracted polysaccharides from Phaeodactylum tricornutum (PTP), characterized the chemical composition and structure, and investigated its anticancer activity on HepG2 cells. The results showed that PTP was a sulfated polysaccharide with a high Mw of 4,810 kDa, and xylose, fucose, glucose and galactose were the main monosaccharides. PTP has significant anticancer activity in a dose-dependent manner (up to 60.37% at 250 ug/mL) according to MTT assays. Furthermore, cycle analysis was carried out to explain its anticancer activity. The results showed that it exhibited anticancer effect mainly through the induction of apoptosis without affecting the cycle and mitosis of HepG2 cells. This might make it a potential drug for anticancer treatment in the future.