Medical Plants Oils and Extracts Are an Antiproliferative Agent for Cancer Cells

Abstract

Medical plants are consumed fresh, dried or decocted in herbal tea and they containing various products such as alkaloids have healing activity of folkloric remedy. The topic of this study was to assessment pharmacological activity, cell cytotoxicity and morphologic alteration of valuable oils and extracts from certain plants used traditionally in Anatolia. The antiproliferative activity for all natural products was conducted following the European Pharmacopoeia 8.0 protocol. According to this protocol, we investigated these natural products for in vitro antiproliferative activity against HeLa (human cervix carcinoma) and HT29 (human colorectal adenocarcinoma) cells using a cell proliferation assay, cytotoxicity assay (LDH), and phase-contrast microscopic image evaluation techniques. Strong antiproliferative activity in 27.5% of the samples was found. The lowest cytotoxicity values were obtained with low or mild effective ones. Almost all samples altered the morphologic shape of the cells from being cell shrinkage and rounding to being decreased cell elongation and volume. Solvent oil system used in solving natural products samples exhibited potent antiproliferative activity at all concentrations. Hence, a synergistic effect of solvent oil was obtained with the combination of notably antiproliferative natural products, but not for the combination rest of products with low or mild. The results of this study support the efficacy of these valuable oils and extracts as an antiproliferative agent for cancer cells, and it suggests that they may be provided as a potential huge source to current chemotherapeutic researches.