Teste de Ames para avaliação do potencial mutagênico de plantas medicinais e novas moléculas com atividades biológicas

Abstract

The Ames test is part of the pre-clinical trial battery to determine the mutagenic potential of new drugs and herbal medicines. This assay detect substances capable of inducing genic mutations such as base pair substitution and frameshift by means of Salmonella Typhimurium strains. In this sense, the present study has been realize to evaluate the potential mutagenic of the plants used in folk medicine and in the process of development of new molecules with biological activities using Ames test. In the first study was do to lifting of medicinal plants studied AMES test through bibliografic search in eletronic database Medline (via Pubmed), Science Direct, Scopus and Web of Science, from 1975 to may of 2018, using the terms “genotoxicity tests” OR “mutagenicity tests” OR “Ames test” AND “medicinal plants”. The research recorded a total of 293 articles, where was analysed 695 medicinal plants these 14 % (98/695) presented mutagenic potential. From among 597 species that no showed mutagenic potential, 32 % (195/597) showed antimutagenic activity. Thus, with the database analysis was possible demonstrate an expressive number of species with mutagenic potential. In addition, evidenced many these studies have not been performed in accordance with the recommended guidelines for the test, and therefore, the indicated results do not guarantee pharmacological safety as to the mutagenic potential. In the second study, two new copper(II) complexes were synthesized and tested for their antifungal potential against 21 clinical isolates of Candida species and their mutagenic potential by the Ames test using Salmonella Typhimurium TA98 and TA100. The complex 1 Cu(Bipy)Cl2(thiouracil) presented antifungal activity against all the tested isolates and no exhibited mutagenic potential, it could be proposed as a potential new drug for anti-Candida therapy. In view of the results found in both studies, it is possible to conclude that the Ames test is a promising tool in the detection of mutagenic potential during the pre-clinical and screening stages of new drug candidates as well as in the investigation of the mutagenic potential of medicinal plants used by folk medicine.