Study on the enantioselectivity cytotoxicity and oxidative damage of hexaconazole on MCF-7 cells

In this work, the enantioselective toxicity and oxidative stress of hexaconazole on MCF-7 cells were investigated.. The activities of MCF-7 cells were tested after the exposure of hexaconazole enantiomers by CCK-8 kit. The changes of LDH release, ROS production, SOD and CAT enzyme activities were measured by oxidative damage kits. Results showed that cell activities decreased from 85.24%, 87.11% and 103.87% to 4.07%, 5.11% and 5.24%, respectively, after the treatment of (−)-, (+)- and rac-hexaconazole in the range of 10-160 mg/L. (−)-Hexaconazole exhibited the highest inhibitory rate on MCF-7 cell activity, followed by (+)- and rac-hexaconazole. Oxidative damage results showed that after hexaconazole exposure at the concentrations of 20, 40 and 80 mg/L, the intracellular LDH release and CAT enzyme activity were gradually increased with the increase of the concentration, while ROS production and SOD activity were increased first and then decreased with the increase of the concentration. Similar to cytotoxicity results, (−)-hexaconazole induced the highest cell oxidative damage. In conclusion, the toxicity order to MCF-7 cells was (−)-hexaconazole > (+)-hexaconazole > rac-hexaconazole. The results of this study provided a basis for further exploring the cytotoxicity mechanism of hexaconazole and the food safety risk assessment.