Comparative analysis of the cytotoxic activity of extracts from different parts of A. absinthium L. on breast cancer cell lines and correlation with active compounds concentration

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to compare the cytotoxicity of different extracts of the plant Artemisia absinthium on breast cancer cell lines and to establish the correlation between the cytotoxicity and the active constituent’s level in these extracts. The cytotoxicity of the extracts was evaluated on the breast cancer cell lines, MCF-7 and MDA MB-231 by MTT assay and LDH release assay. An HPTLC method was developed for the simultaneous estimation of active constituents, that is, artemisinin, artemisinic acid, and alpha-thujone in different parts of A. absinthium. The whole extract was best among all the extracts tested with least IC₅₀ value and high LDH release that is, 491.19 µg/µL with 27.92% for MCF-7 and 459.97 µg/µL with 29.43% for MDA MB-231 cell lines respectively. Although, the concentration of all three quantified active compounds was higher in the extract from aerial part; however, the whole extract showed the best cytotoxicity among all extracts evaluated on the breast cancer cell lines. Surprisingly, our results demonstrate that the quantified active compounds were not solely responsible for the cytotoxic activity of the plant parts and further studies may be conducted to identify the compounds with synergistic, allosteric or antagonistic effects.

Keywords:

• Alpha-thujone
• artemisinic acid
• artemisinin
• breast cancer
• cytotoxicity

Acknowledgments

The authors are highly thankful to University Grants Commission (UGC) for financial support to the Department of Biotechnology, Jamia Hamdard. The authors are grateful to the Department of Biotechnology and Central Instrumentation Facility (C.I.F) of SCLS, Jamia Hamdard for providing infrastructure facilities for the study and HNF (Hamdard National Fellowship) for providing fellowship to Mr. Mohd Mughees during this study.

Disclosure Statement

The authors have no conflict of interest.