Caracterização química e propriedades bioativas de amostras de veneno de abelha obtidas no Nordeste de Portugal

Bee venom (BV) or apitoxin is an apiculture product that has been used since ancient times for several applications namely in the traditional medicine apitherapy. It is a complex mixture of substances responsible for different bioactive properties. In the present work, five bee venom samples obtained from Apis mellifera iberiensis from two different apiaries in Bragança (Aveleda and Milhão) were chemically characterized and evaluated for their antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and cytotoxic properties. The LC/DAD/ESI-MSn analysis of the samples showed that melittin was the most abundant compound, followed by phospholipase A2 and apamin. All the samples revealed antioxidant activity, measured by the free radicals scavenging activity, reducing power and lipid peroxidation inhibition, and anti-inflammatory activity, determined by the capacity to inhibit NO formation in murine macrophages (RAW 264,7). However, it was not observed a direct relation between the mentioned bioactive properties and the chemical profile (qualitative or quantitative) of the samples. The results highlight that there are specific concentrations in which these compounds are more active (e.g., in the single sample obtained from Aveleda apiary). The BV samples also showed similar cytotoxicity for all the tested tumor cell lines (MCF-7, NCI-H460, HeLa and HepG2), being MCF-7 (breast carcinoma) and HeLa (cervical carcinoma) the most susceptible ones. Nevertheless, the studied samples seem to be not suitable to treat breast, hepatocellular and cervical carcinoma because at the active concentrations, the samples were also toxic for non-tumor cells (porcine liver primary culture, PLP2). Regarding the non-small lung cell carcinoma, BV should be used under the concentration toxic for non-tumor cells. Overall, the present study corroborates the enormous bioactive potential of BV being the first report on samples from Portugal.