Evaluation of the anticarcinogenic effect of solanumrastratum dunal (Mexican thistle) on breast cancer cells MDA.

Abstract

84 Background: The use of medicinal plants has been very common since ancient times, used for the treatment of several diseases such as cancer. In many towns in Mexico are used extracts from plants such as Solanum rastratum Dunal (buffalo bur, spiny nightshade, Colorado bur, Kansas thistle, Mexican thistle, and Texas thistle), which has shown to be effective in improving symptoms of some diseases conditions, there are reports indicating its use in the treatment of some types of cancer, such as the breast and cervical cancer. For this reason, in this work the aim was to evaluate the anticarcinogenic effect of extracts of Solanum rastratum Dunal on human breast cancer cells MDA. Methods: The plant was collected, cleaned, separate the different sections, were dried in darkness in special panels at room temperature; subsequently the extracts were prepared from the leaf, stem and flower-fruit using solvents of different polarity (methanol, ethyl acetate and hexane). Extracts were analyzed in cultured MDA cells line and the cytotoxic effect was evaluated by MTT technique. Results: The results showed that the stem and leaf extracts were those which showed higher inhibitory effect on cell viability, with those obtained with ethyl acetate which showed better anti-carcinogenic effect, while the hexane extract of the flower and fruit mixture which was showed higher inhibitory effect on this part of the plant; however generally the ethyl acetate extract obtained from the leaf was the one with greater cytotoxic effect in this cell line. Conclusions: The results of this work lead to the conclusion that is greater cytotoxic effect of ethyl acetate extract of the leaf than the other extracts tested. These results are contrasting with the traditional use of the extract of this plant, since traditionally people employ the aqueous extract of this plant, which would be equivalent to methanolic extract used in this study, which was who presented the lower cytotoxic effect of three solvents studied.