Background: Medicinal plants have been used in traditional medicine for the treatment of numerous diseases
worldwide. There is a dire need for new anticancer agents and plants used in traditional medicine are a particularly
useful source.
Materials and methods: In this study, extracts of five different plants that grow in the desert of Saudi Arabia were
evaluated to assess their cytotoxicity against the MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cell line. Soxhlet extraction was used for
the leaves and stems, using different solvents. The cytotoxicity of these extracts against MDA-MB-231 breast cancer
cells was assessed using the 3-(4, 5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2, 5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) and lactate
dehydrogenase (LDH) assays. The apoptotic cellular morphological changes were observed using inverted and
fluorescence microscopes.
Results: Our results showed that two of the five different medicinal plants (
Rumex vesicarius
and
Malva parviflora
)
exhibited strong anticancer activity against the breast cancer cells. Specifically, 2 of the 40 extracts (from the five
studied plants) showed promising activity. The chloroform extract of the stem of
R. vesicarius (RSV CHCL
3) exhibited
moderate anticancer activity with a half-maximal inhibitory concentration (IC
50) of 230 μg/mL while that of the hexane
extract of
M. parviflora stems (MPS Hex) was 248 μg/mL. Loss of cell integrity, shrinkage of the cytoplasm, and cell
detachment were observed in the extract-treated MDA-MB-231 cells.
Conclusion: R. vesicarius and
M. parviflora chloroform and n-hexane stem extracts showed significant cytotoxicity
against MDA-MB-231 human breast carcinoma cells.
