Evaluation of cytotoxicity, genotoxicity and epigenetic profile in lung cells of main pesticides used in the Barretos-SP region

• Grant number: 16/23412-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: September 01, 2017
• End date: July 31, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Genetics - Mutagenesis
• Principal Investigator: Henrique César Santejo Silveira
• Grantee: Julia Maria Saraiva Duarte
• Host Institution: Hospital do Câncer de Barretos. Fundação Pio XII (FP). Barretos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Brazil is the largest consumer of pesticides in the world and São Paulo is the first among the Brazilian states. The intensive use of these chemical agents is responsible for numerous diseases, making it a major public health and environmental problem. Pesticides are a heterogeneous mixture composed of synthetic chemicals produced in laboratory. The exposure to pesticides occurs mainly during activities in the workplace that can contribute to the emergence of new cancers, recent studies have reported the incidence of lung cancer in this class of workers. Some types of pesticides trigger DNA damage by performing a mutagenic role, causing structural or functional damages at the chromosomal and DNA levels, and can be detected through the appearance of micronuclei, comets, changes in sister chromatids and chromosomal deletions. Other studies demonstrate that these chemical agents may contribute to deregulation in the gene expression profile by altering the epigenetic pattern. Thus, it has been of fundamental importance to identify environmental factors that can increase the cancer risk in humans, but there are few studies that correlate the exposure to pesticides and their effect on lung cells and possible alterations in the epigenetic pattern. From this it will be evaluated cytotoxicity using the MTS assay and reactive oxygen species (ROS), genotoxicity it will be assessed using the comet assay and micronucleus test, and genome methylation profile analysis (genome-wide) it will be performed using the microarray methodology (Methylation arrays Illumina) of the pulmonary cells exposed to glyphosate, hexazinone, atrazine and 2,4 D pesticides widely used in the region of Barretos- SP in lung cells. (AU)