Recently, many studies have reported the anticancer properties of
flavonoid luteolin against a variety of
tumors, but there is still a lack in the description of its mechanism of action. In attempt to better contribute to the literature, we evaluated the antiproliferative activity of
luteolin extracted by Fridericia platyphylla in a panel of tumor cell lines representative of six different tissues.
Luteolin presented antiproliferative activity for all the assessed tumor cell lines, being
glioblastoma the most sensitive one. This compound was able to inhibit U-251 cells migration and
tumorigenesis. Besides,
luteolin leads U-251
tumor cells to apoptosis death by depolarisation of the mitochondrial membrane, ERK
proteins phosphorylation, cleavage of PARP and
Caspase 9, further inducing DNA damage by H2AX phosphorylation, which had not yet been described for
glioblastomas. Altogether, our results reaffirm
luteolin as a potential therapeutic drug.