Plant-derived natural products are known to have cancer chemo-preventive and chemo-therapeutic properties. Plant extracts or their active constituents are used as folk medicine in traditional therapies by 80% of the world population. The aim of the present study was to determine the anti-proliferative potential of Fumaria vaillantii extracts on three different cancer cell lines including malignant melanoma SKMEL-3, human breast adenocarcinoma MCF-7 and human myelogenous leukemia K562 as well as human gingival fibroblast (HGF) as normal cell line. Anti-proliferative activity was evaluated by 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT), flowcytometry and annexin methods. Total phenolics and flavonoids were determined by Folin-Ciocalteu and aluminum chloride methods. Chloroform fraction had the lowest IC50 value at 72 h (0.1 μg/ml) in MCF-7 cells. Flowcytometry and annexin-V analysis indicated that the chloroform fraction induced necrosis in MCF-7 cells. In addition, the colorimetric methods showed that the methanolic fraction possessed the highest amount of total phenolics (33.03 ± 0.75 mg/g of dry powder) and flavonoids (10.5 ± 2.0 mg/g of dry powder). The collective data demonstrated that F. vaillantii chloroform fraction may contain effective compounds with chemo-therapeutic potential act through an apoptotic independent pathway.
Keywords: Fumaria vaillantii, Cancer, Apoptosis, MTT assay, Flowcytometry
Click on "Archives" to access the full archive of scientific preprints. You may use the categories and the search functionality to find select preprints you're interested in.