Antiproliferative Activity and Apoptosis Induction of ethyle alcohole seed extract of Peganum harmala L on human gastric carcinoma cells (AGS)

Objectives: Cancer resistance to widely used chemotherapeutic agents is gradually developed. Thus, natural products, mainly isolated from medicinal plants, have been considered as valuable sources for herbal anticancer drugs. Therefore, this research was aimed to evaluate in vitroantiproliferative activity and apoptosis-inducing of crude ethylealcohole extract of Peganumharmala L. (family Zygophyllaceae). Materials Methods: In this research, crude ethylealcohole extract of P.harmala was prepared and subjected to fractionation with different polarity. Subsequently, the extract and the fractions, each was evaluated for their in vitroantiproliferative activity using cancerous (AGS) and normal (HDFs) cell lines using MTT [3-(4, 5-dimethylthiazol-2ol) 2, 5 diphenyltetrazoliumbromide] assay by which the cell viability (%) and IC50 values were calculated. To determine whether the cytotoxicity of these compounds involved the induction of apoptosis, AGS cells were treated with one time IC50 concentrations of test compound, stained with both propidium iodide (PI) and Annexin V-fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC), and analyzed by flow cytometry.Results and Conclusion: In vitro cytotoxicity assay showed that cell viability was significantly reduced in a dose-dependent manner following treatment with crude ethylealcohole extract. Based on probit regression model, antiproliferative activity of crude ethylealcohole extract, cholophorm fraction, and n-butanol fraction on AGS cell lines and HDFs cell line was significantly different (P 0.001). The results of Flow cytometric analysis showed that crude ethylealcohole extractof P.harmalainduced early apoptotic cell death. These findings suggest thatcrudethe extract suppressthe proliferation of cancer cells through induction of early apoptosis.