Cytotoxicity and chemical profiling of the Red Sea soft corals Litophyton arboreum

The objective of this research was to evaluate the cytotoxic activities of the fractions and isolated compounds of the soft corals Litophyton arboreum against A549, MCF-7 and HepG2 cell lines by MTT assay method, and to chemically investigate the various metabolites of its total extract using LC-HR-ESI-MS metabolomic profiling. The metabolomic profiling revealed the presence of various metabolites, mainly sesquiterpenes and steroids reported for the first time in L. arboreum. Additionally, eight compounds (1-8) have been isolated from the n-hexane-chloroform (1:1) fraction that exhibited noticeable activity towards A549, MCF-7 and HepG2 cell lines. The steroids (5 and 6), and the sesquiterpene (1) exerted noticeable activity against A549 cell line (IC50 28.5 +/- 4.4, 36.9 +/- 2.9 and 67.3 +/- 9.9 mu M/mL, respectively) compared to etoposide as standard cytotoxic agent (IC50 48.3 +/- 7.6 mu M/mL). Compound 6 also exhibited cytotoxicity against MCF-7 cell line (IC50 55.3 +/- 4.9 mu M/mL).