Understanding the Artemia Salina (Brine Shrimp) Test: Pharmacological Significance and Global Impact

Dionisio A Olmedo; Yelkaira Vasquez; Juan Antonio Morán; Estela Guerrero De León; Catherina Caballero-George; Pablo N Solís

doi:10.2174/1386207326666230703095928

Understanding the Artemia Salina (Brine Shrimp) Test: Pharmacological Significance and Global Impact

Comb Chem High Throughput Screen. 2023 Jul 3. doi: 10.2174/1386207326666230703095928. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Dionisio A Olmedo¹, Yelkaira Vasquez¹, Juan Antonio Morán², Estela Guerrero De León², Catherina Caballero-George³, Pablo N Solís¹

Affiliations

¹ Centro de Investigaciones Farmacognósticas de la Flora Panameña (CIFLORPAN), Facultad de Farmacia, Universidad de Panamá.
² Departamento de Farmacología, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Panamá.
³ Centre of Innovation and Technology Transfer, Institute of Scientific Research and High Technology Services (INDICASAT-AIP), Building 208, City of Knowledge, Panama.

PMID: 37403396
DOI: 10.2174/1386207326666230703095928

Abstract

Background: The microplate benchtop brine shrimp test (BST) has been widely used for screening and bio-guided isolation of many active compounds, including natural products. Although the interpretation given to the results appears dissimilar, our findings suggest a correlation between positive results with a specific mechanism of action.

Objective: This study aimed to evaluate drugs belonging to fifteen pharmacological categories having diverse mechanisms of action and carry out a bibliometric analysis of over 700 citations related to microwell BST.

Methods: Test compounds were evaluated in a serial dilution on the microwell BST using healthy nauplii of Artemia salina and after 24 hrs of exposition, the number of alive and dead nauplii was determined, and the LC50 was estimated. A metric study regarding the citations of the BST miniaturized method, sorted by type of documents cited, contributing country, and interpretation of results was conducted on 706 selected citations found in Google Scholar.

Results: Out of 206 drugs tested belonging to fifteen pharmacological categories, twenty-six showed LC50 values <100 µM, most of them belonging to the category of antineoplastic drugs; compounds with different therapeutical uses were found to be cytotoxic as well. A bibliometric analysis showed 706 documents citing the miniaturized BST; 78% of them belonged to academic laboratories from developing countries located on all continents, 63% interpreted their results as cytotoxic activity and 35% indicated general toxicity assessment.

Conclusion: BST is a simple, affordable, benchtop assay, capable of detecting cytotoxic drugs with specific mechanisms of action, such as protein synthesis inhibition, antimitotic, DNA binding, topoisomerase I inhibitors, and caspases cascade interfering drugs. The microwell BST is a technique that is used worldwide for the bio-guided isolation of cytotoxic compounds from different sources.

Keywords: Artemia salina; Brine shrimp test; antineoplastic; bibliometric; bioassay; cytotoxicity; mechanism of action.