Susana Fiorentino

• PhD. Immunology
• Research Director at Pontifical Xavierian University

Medicinal plants constitute a valuable reservoir for discovering novel therapeutic compounds that target leukemia and various other forms of cancer. Plants of the genus Tillandsia , such as T. recurvata , have different ethnobotanical uses, including the treatment of hemorrhoids, gastritis, arthritis, ulcers, sore throats, cancer, and diabetes. Spe...

Background The main limits of current antitumor therapies are chemoresistance, relapses and toxic effects that impair a patient’s quality of life. Therefore, the discovery of therapeutic alternatives, such as adjuvants to conventional therapy that modulate the intracellular oxidation state, or the immune response activation remains a challenge.1 2...

Background Targeting energy metabolism, mitochondrial, and redox homeostasis in acute leukemia can directly affect tumor progression and indirectly influence immune cells in the microenvironment. Natural products from plants have been extensively studied and shown to regulate tumor metabolism both directly and indirectly. Isolated natural products...

Tumor metabolism is a crucial aspect of cancer development, and mitochondria plays a significant role in the aggressiveness and metastasis of tumors. As a result, mitochondria have become a promising therapeutic target in cancer treatment, leading to the development of compounds known as mitocans. In our group, we have consolidated the search of an...

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a prevalent and deadly tumor worldwide. Understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying CRC development will improve treatment outcomes and patient survival. Natural molecules and metabolites from plants, such as Tillandsia usneoides, reduce tumor growth by modulating glucose metabolism and increasing reactive oxygen sp...

Although herbal drugs are often considered safe for consumption, there is increasing evidence that some can generate undesirable health effects. However, polyphenols found in certain plants have been shown to provide a range of benefits for human health. In previous work, a standardized and quantified extract (P2Et) obtained from Caesalpinia spinos...

Cancer is understood as a multifactorial disease that involve multiple cell types and phenotypes in the tumor microenvironment (TME). The components of the TME can interact directly or via soluble factors (cytokines, chemokines, growth factors, extracellular vesicles, etc.). Among the cells composing the TME, mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) appear as...

The Covid-19 infection outbreak led to a global epidemic, and although several vaccines have been developed, the appearance of mutations has allowed the virus to evade the immune response. Added to this is the existing risk of the appearance of new emerging viruses. Therefore, it is necessary to explore novel antiviral therapies. Here, we investiga...

Previously, studies have shown that leukemic cells exhibit elevated glycolytic metabolism and oxidative phosphorylation in comparison to hematopoietic stem cells. These metabolic processes play a crucial role in the growth and survival of leukemic cells. Due to the metabolic plasticity of tumor cells, the use of natural products has been proposed a...

Natural products obtained from Petiveria alliacea (Anamu-SC) and Caesalpinia spinosa (P2Et) have been used for cancer treatment, but the mechanisms by which they exert their antitumor activity appear to be different. In the present work, we show that the Anamu-SC extract reduces tumor growth in the 4T1 murine mammary carcinoma model but not in the...

Acute leukemias (AL) are aggressive neoplasms with high mortality rates. Metabolomics and oxidative status have emerged as important tools to identify new biomarkers with clinical utility. To identify the metabolic differences between healthy individuals (HI) and patients with AL, a multiplatform untargeted metabolomic and lipidomic approach was co...

Background Chemotherapy in breast cancer is effective but can generate significant toxicity and lead to tumor resistance. Joint treatment with standardized plant extracts can be an alternative to improve the response and allow an effective activation of the antitumor immune response that favors recovery in the short and long term. The P2Et extract...

The poor response, adverse effects and drug resistance to treatment of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) have led to searching for safer and more effective therapeutic alternatives. We previously demonstrated that the alcoholic extract of Petiveria alliacea (Esperanza) has a significant in vitro antitumor effect on other tumor cells and also the ability...

Background The energy metabolism of drug-resistant tumor cells can provide a survival advantage during therapy, and treatment itself may influence metabolic reprogramming. Petiveria alliacea (Traditional name: Anamu) could inhibit glycolysis and OXPHOX modulating tumor metabolism, making it a potential treatment for tumors with altered metabolism....

Although the antitumor effect of P. nigrum has been widely studied, research related to its possible immunomodulatory effects is relatively scarce. Here, the antitumor and immunomodulatory activity of an ethanolic extract of P. nigrum were evaluated in the murine models of 4T1 breast cancer and B16-F10 melanoma. In vitro evaluations showed that the...

Leukemic cells acquire complex and often multifactorial mechanisms of resistance to treatment, including various metabolic alterations. Although the use of metabolic modulators has been proposed for several decades, their use in clinical practice has not been established. Natural products, the so-called botanical drugs, are capable of regulating tu...

During carcinogenesis, the microenvironment plays a fundamental role in tumor progression and resistance. This tumor microenvironment (TME) is characterized by being highly immunosuppressive in most cases, which makes it an important target for the development of new therapies. One of the most important groups of cells that orchestrate immunosuppre...

Introduction: Regulatory T cells (Treg cells) in a tumor environment and the expression of forkhead box P3 (FOXP3) in tumor cells have been associated with a poor prognosis. There are few studies evaluating Treg cells and FOXP3 in B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-cell ALL). This study aimed to evaluate the frequencies of Treg cells in bone m...

Leukemic cells often show high nitric oxide (NO) and reactive oxygen species (ROS) levels. These can lead to resistance to apoptosis and therapy and increased proliferation. Plant-derived extracts decrease chemoresistance in cancer cells. In this study, we evaluated the effects of the plant-derived extracts P2Et (Caesalpinia spinosa) and Anamu-SC (...

Objetivo: establecer diferencias metabólicas entre pacientes con LA e individuos sanos (IS) mediante LC/GC-QTOF-MS. Metodología: posterior a la firma del formato de consentimiento informado, se recolectaron muestras de plasma de 20 pacientes con diagnóstico de LA (incluyendo leucemia mieloides y linfoides) del servicio de Hematología del Hospital U...

Objetivo: analizar las características clínicas, eficacia del esquema AIDA PETHEMA, respuesta a la inducción, supervivencia global y supervivencia libre de evento en pacientes diagnosticados con leucemia promielocítica aguda (LPA) en una institución de cuarto nivel durante 10 años. Materiales y métodos: Recolección de datos: se ejecutó una búsqueda...

The modulation of the tumor microenvironment by natural products may play a significant role in the response of tumor cells to chemotherapy. In this study, we evaluated the effect of extracts derived from P2Et (Caesalpinia spinosa) and Anamú-SC (Petiveria alliacea) plants, previously studied by our group, on the viability and ROS levels in the K562...

P2Et is the standardized extract of Caesalpinia spinosa (C. spinosa), which has shown the ability to reduce primary tumors and metastasis in animal models of cancer, by mechanisms involving the increase in intracellular Ca++, reticulum stress, induction of autophagy, and subsequent activation of the immune system. Although P2Et has been shown to be...

Interactions in the tumor microenvironment (TME) between tumor cells and stromal cells such as cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAF) favor increased survival, progression, and transformation of cancer cells by activating mechanisms of invasion and metastasis. The design of new therapies to modulate or eliminate the CAF phenotype or functionality has...

The main limits of current antitumor therapies are chemoresistance, relapses, and toxicity that impair patient quality of life. Therefore, the discovery of therapeutic alternatives, such as adjuvants to conventional therapy that modulate the intracellular oxidation state or the immune response, remains a challenge. Owing to traditional medicine, se...

Introducción: en Colombia el acceso a los tratamientos está influenciado por características como la fragmentación en los servicios de salud, barreras administrativas, disponibilidad de acceso y el tipo de cobertura en el plan de salud. Los retrasos en la administración de los tratamientos afectan la intensidad de la dosis relativa (IDR), que repre...

Introducción: para garantizar la respuesta del paciente en leucemias agudas (LA), se han comenzado a utilizar pruebas in vitro con el fin de determinar los perfiles de sensibilidad a la quimioterapia, e incluso de algunos extractos naturales. Estas plataformas de sensibilidad permiten la selección de quimioterapéuticos a utilizar en pacientes y, al...

Background It has been proposed that polyphenols can be used in the development of new therapies against COVID-19, given their ability to interfere with the adsorption and entrance processes of the virus, thus disrupting viral replication. Seeds from Caesalpinia spinosa , have been traditionally used for the treatment of inflammatory pathologies an...

El cáncer es un conjunto de enfermedades caracterizadas por el crecimiento y multiplicación incontrolada de células anormales.

Neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAT) in breast cancer (BC) has been used to reduce tumor burden prior to surgery. However, the impact on prognosis depends on the establishment of Pathological Complete Response (pCR), which is influenced by tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte levels and the activation of the antitumor immune response. Nonetheless, NAT can affec...

The polyphenol-enriched extract called P2Et derived from Caesalpinia spinosa (C. spinosa) had antitumor and immunomodulatory activities reported in breast cancer, leukemia, and melanoma. The aim of this study was to evaluate the safety and maximum tolerated dose of P2Et extract in Colombian healthy volunteers in a phase 1 clinical trial, open label...

Neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAT) in breast cancer (BC) has been used to reduce tumor burden prior to surgery. However, the impact on prognosis depends on the establishment of Pathological Complete Response (pCR), which is influenced by tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte levels and the activation of the antitumor immune response. Nonetheless, NAT can affec...

The need for new therapeutic approaches to improve the response in acute leukemia (AL), either by directing therapy or with new therapeutic alternatives, has been a research and clinical interest topic. We evaluated whether blasts from AL patients were sensitive ex vivo to the induction chemotherapy and whether the extracts of Petiveria alliacea (A...

P2Et extract obtained from the Caesalpinia spinosa plant is abundant in phenolic compounds such as gallic acid and ethyl gallate and can generate signals to activate the immune response by inducing a mechanism known as immunogenic cell death in murine models of breast cancer and melanoma. Immunogenic cell death involves mechanisms such as autophagy...

The standardized P2Et extract obtained from Caesalpinia spinosa has shown antioxidant, and direct antitumor activity, but also activation of specific immune response through the induction of tumor immunogenic cell death in breast and melanoma cancer models. The present work evaluated the mutagenicity and genotoxicity profile of P2Et to continue the...

PD-1/PD-L1 pathway plays a role in inhibiting immune response. Therapeutic antibodies aimed at blocking the PD-1/PD-L1 interaction have entered clinical development and have been approved for a variety of cancers. However, the clinical benefits are reduced to a group of patients. The research in combined therapies, which allow for a greater respons...

Abstract The main cause of death by cancer is metastasis rather than local complications of primary tumors. Recent studies suggest that breast cancer stem cells (BCSCs), retains the ability to self-renew and differentiate to repopulate the entire tumor, also, they have been associated with resistance to chemotherapy and tumor recurrence, even after...

p>Globally cancer is the second leading cause of death, for that reason, there is emerging research of new substances with potential anticancer activity or in combination with existing therapies to enhance their antitumoral activity. In this sense, therapies based on natural compounds derived from plants have shown antitumor efficacy with reduced s...

In this review, we report on the complexity of breast cancer stem cells as key cells in the emergence of a chemoresistant tumor phenotype, and as a result, the appearance of distant metastasis in breast cancer patients. The search for mechanisms that increase sensitivity to chemotherapy and also allow activation of the tumor-specific immune respons...

Background: The impact of the dose intensity administered in consolidation in Latin America is unknown. This study aimed to evaluate the relative dose intensity (RDI) in consolidation and its impact in overall survival. Methods: A retrospective study of 86 patients with AML who were diagnosed between 2010 and 2016 with a 2-year follow-up in a fo...

Previous studies revealed the potential of Labrenzia aggregata USBA 371 to produce cytotoxic metabolites. This study explores its metabolic diversity and compounds involved in its cytotoxic activity. Extracts from the extracellular fraction of strain USBA 371 showed high levels of cytotoxic activity associated with the production of diketopiperazin...

Natural products and traditional herbal medicine are an important source of alternative bioactive compounds but very few plant-based preparations have been scientifically evaluated and validated for their potential as medical treatments. However, a promising field in the current therapies based on plant-derived compounds is the study of their immun...

Polyphenols elicit antitumor activities, in part, through the induction of anti-or pro-oxidant effects in cancer cells which promote priming of protective anti-tumor immunity. We recently characterized a polyphenol-rich extract from Caesalpinia spinosa (P2Et) that stimulates in vivo antitumor responses against breast and melanoma tumor models via t...

Background: The tumor cells responsible for metastasis are highly resistant to chemotherapy and have characteristics of stem cells, with a high capacity for self-regeneration and the use of detoxifying mechanisms that participate in drug resistance. In vivo models of highly resistant cells allow us to evaluate the real impact of the immune respons...

Supplementary_figure_1 – Supplemental material for Breast Tumor Cells Highly Resistant to Drugs Are Controlled Only by the Immune Response Induced in an Immunocompetent Mouse Model

Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is an oncogenic virus associated with the development of aggressive and poor-prognosis B-cell lymphomas in patients infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV⁺ patients). The most important risk factors for these malignancies include immune dysfunction, chronic immune activation, and loss of T-cell receptor (TCR) reper...

Distribution of CD4+ and CD8+ T cell subpopulations in HIV+ patients with viral failure. Peripheral blood samples of HIV+ patients were cultured in vitro at basal (without EBV) or EBV-stimulated conditions. T cells were analyzed with specific mAbs and flow cytometry. The distribution of naïve (TN) and central memory (TCM) CD4+ T cells at basal cond...

Clonotypic distribution of T cells from HIV+ patients at different clinical stages at basal conditions. Peripheral blood samples of HIV+ patients at different stages of disease and healthy controls were cultured in vitro at basal (without EBV) conditions. The distribution of CD4+ (A) and CD8+ (B) T cells positive for any of 24 TCR-Vβ families was a...

Distribution of CD4+ T cell subpopulations of HIV+ patients with AIDS-defining diseases. Peripheral blood samples of HIV+ patients were cultured in vitro at basal (without EBV) or EBV-stimulated conditions. T cells were analyzed with specific mAbs and flow cytometry. The distribution of naïve (TN) and central memory (TCM) CD4+ T cells at basal cond...

Cytokine response to a polyclonal stimulus in HIV+ patients with immunological failure Peripheral blood samples of HIV+ patients were cultured in vitro with a polyclonal (PMA + ionomycin) stimulus, without BFA, for collecting supernatants and measuring the concentration of soluble cytokines by CBA and flow cytometry. Supernatant TNF-α and IL-2 leve...

Polyphenols have tumoricidal effects via anti-proliferative, anti-angiogenic and cytotoxic mechanisms and have recently been demonstrated to modulate the immune response through their anti- or pro- oxidant activity. Nevertheless, it remains controversial whether antioxidant-rich supplements have real beneficial effects on health, especially in comp...

El término cáncer integra un grupo de enfermedades complejas que responden a múltiples factores y se manifiestan de forma diferente según el órgano afectado o el mecanismo molecular implicado. En términos generales, se presenta una alteración en los mecanismos que regulan el crecimiento de las células, lo cual genera proliferaciones incontroladas q...

Background: Breast cancer is the second most common cancer worldwide. N, N, N', N'-Tetrakis (2-pyridylmethyl)-ethylenediamine (TPEN) is a lipid-soluble zinc metal chelator that induces apoptosis in cancer cells through oxidative stress (OS). However, the effectiveness and the mechanisms involved in TPEN-induced cell death in mammary adenocarcinoma...

The invention relates to a combination of compounds derived from gallic acid , with an antitumoral and antimeta static activity via a mechanism that involves the induction of apoptosis and the immunogenic death of the tumor cells and the subsequent activation of the specific immune response . The invention also relates to a composition containing a...

The original version of this article (Diaz-Cardenas et al. 2017) unfortunately contained a mistake in Fig. 1. The pie chart of Fig. 1 should explain the distribution of the relative abundance of the Bacteria and Archaea strains isolated at Zipaquirá salt mine: Proteobacteria 39%; Actinobacteria 9%, Bacteroidetes 1%, Archaea 3% and Firmicutes 48% in...

In order to select halophilic microorganisms as a source of compounds with cytotoxic activities, a total of 135 bacterial strains were isolated from water and sediment samples collected from the Zipaquirá salt mine in the Colombian Andes. We determined the cytotoxic effects of 100 crude extracts from 54 selected organisms on the adherent murine mam...

Introducción y objetivos. La presencia de linfocitos T reguladores (Tregs) en el microambiente tumoral y la expresión del factor de transcripción FOXP3 se asocian con mal pronóstico. Existen pocos estudios que evalúen la presencia de Tregs y de FOXP3 en leucemia linfoide aguda B (LLA-B). Objetivo: describir la frecuencia de Tregs en médula ósea (MO...

Flow cytometry (FCM) was implemented in 2008 at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana and later at the Hospital Universitario San Ignacio to examine special samples of patients with hematological malignancies and solid tumors other than bone marrow and peripheral blood for diagnosis and monitoring. This study describes the main findings of special s...

Metabolic plasticity in cancer cells assures cell survival and cell proliferation under variable levels of oxygen and nutrients. Therefore, new anticancer treatments endeavor to target such plasticity by modifying main metabolic pathways as glycolysis or oxidative phosphorylation. In American traditional medicine Petiveria alliacea L., Phytolaccace...

Cancer stem cells (CSC) are the primary cell type responsible for metastasis and relapse. ABC-transporters are integral membrane proteins involved in the translocation of substrates across membranes protecting CSC from chemotherapeutic agents. A plant extract derived from C. spinosa (P2Et) previously investigated for its antitumor activity has been...

An anti-tumor extract of C. spinosa (P2Et) previously obtained by our group, exhibits cytotoxic activity on tumor cell lines and reduce primary breast and melanoma tumor in BALB/c and C57BL/6 mice. Interestingly, P2Et also reduce lung and spleen metastasis from breast cancer cells in mice, due to activation of specific immune response against the t...

For the evaluation of the cytotoxic activity of the species Conyza trihecatactis and Ageratina vacciniaefolia (Asteareaceae), from the aerial parts of the species the complete ethanolic extracts and fractions were obtained with solvents in order of increasing polarity. The evaluation of the cytotoxic activity was performed by the MTT method on tumo...

Recent findings suggest that part of the anti-tumor effects of several chemotherapeutic agents require an intact immune system. This is in part due to the induction of immunogenic cell death. We have identified a gallotannin-rich fraction, obtained from Caesalpinia spinosa (P2Et) as an anti-tumor agent in both breast carcinoma and melanoma. Here, w...

Oral presentation at V Congreso Iberoamericano de Productos Naturales

Natural compounds are promising sources for anticancer therapies because of their multifunctional activity and low toxicity. Although the host immune response (IR) is clearly implicated in tumor control, the relationship between natural therapies and IR has not yet been elucidated. The present work evaluates IR induction after treatment with a gall...

Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is a persistent virus with oncogenic capacity that has been implicated in the development of aggressive B-cell lymphomas, primarily in immunosuppressed individuals, although it can be present in immunocompetent individuals. Changes in the function and clonal diversity of T lymphocytes might be implied by viral persistence a...

he invention relates to a bioactive fraction of Petivería alliacea having an antitumour activity, and to the use of same for producing medicaments for treating cancer. The invention also relates to a pharmaceutical combination for treating cancer, comprising the bioactive fraction of Petiveria alliacea and at least one immunostimulant that can prod...

The invention relates to a bioactive fraction of Petiveria alliacea having an antitumour activity, and to the use of same for producing medicaments for treating cancer. The invention also relates to a pharmaceutical combination for treating, comprising the bioactive fraction of Petiveria alliacea and at least one immunostimulant that can produce th...

Epstein Barr virus (EBV) is present in 95% of the world's adult population. The immune response participates in immune vigilance and persistent infection control, and this condition is maintained by both a good quality (functionality) and quantity of specific T cells throughout life. In the present study, we evaluated EBV-specific CD4(+) and CD8(+)...

Folk medicine uses aqueous and alcoholic extracts from Petiveria alliacea (Phytolaccaceae) in leukemia and breast cancer treatment in the Caribbean, Central and South America. To evaluate in vitro and in vivo biological activity of a P. alliacea ethyl acetate fraction derived from leaves and stems in a metastatic breast adenocarcinoma model (4T1)....

Introducción El melanoma maligno progresa rápidamente, es metastásico y altamente resistente, haciendo que las terapias convencionales sean poco eficaces. Recientemente se demostró (Kepp et al. Cancer metastasis reviews. 2011;30:61–9) que las quimioterapias con antraciclinas son particularmente eficaces cuando hay activación de la respuesta inmune...

Introducción El principal tipo de cáncer que afecta a mujeres en el mundo es el cáncer de mama, para el cual se utiliza terapia adyuvante e intervención quirúrgica del tumor primario cuando es conveniente. La quimioterapia es una de las terapias de elección para el cáncer de seno, pero debido a diferentes causas biológicas no siempre es efectiva (M...

Background Several treatment alternatives are available for primary breast cancer, although those for metastatic disease or inflammation associated with tumor progression are ineffective. Therefore, there is a great need for new therapeutic alternatives capable of generating an immune response against residual tumor cells, thus contributing to erad...