Afaf Al Groshi
1,2, Andrew R Evans
1, Fyaz M. D. Ismail
1, Lutfun Nahar
1, Satyajit D. Sarker
1*1 Medicinal Chemistry and Natural Products Research Group, School of Pharmacy and Biomolecular Sciences, Liverpool John Moores University, James Parsons Building, Byrom Street, Liverpool L3 3AF, UK.
2 Pharmacognosy Department, Faculty of Pharmacy, Tripoli University, Tripoli, Libya.
Abstract
Background: The current study
was undertaken to assess the cytotoxicity of the leaves of Libyan Juniperus phoenicea (Cupressaceae) against human cancer cell lines.
Methods: The cytotoxicity
of the n-hexane, dichloromethane
(DCM) and methanol (MeOH) extracts of the leaves of J. phoenicea (JP), obtained from sequential Soxhlet extractions,
was
assessed against four human cancer cell lines: EJ138 (human bladder carcinoma),
HepG2 (human liver hepatocellular carcinoma), A549 (human lung carcinoma) and
MCF7 (human breast adenocarcinoma) using the MTT assay.
Results: The cell line A549 was the most sensitive to the JP extracts, with the highest level of cytotoxicity with the IC50 values
of 16, 13 and 100 µg/mL for the DCM, n-hexane
and MeOH extracts, respectively.
However, generally the most potent cytotoxic extract across the other
cells tested was the n-hexane
extract, followed by the DCM extract, whilst the MeOH extracts showed little or
no cytotoxicity. The percentage of
viability of cells decreased as the concentration of test compounds increased.
The cytotoxicity of various chromatographic fractions from the extracts was also studied against the A459 cells. For the n-hexane fractions, the
IC50 values were 160, 62, 90, 30, 9.5 and 40 µg/mL for fractions 1
to 5 and 7, respectively. Fractions 4 and 5 showed the greatest effect. DCM
fractions 2, 3 and 4 had the IC50 values of 60, 92 and 19 µg/mL,
respectively, and DCM fractions 5 to 8 were non-cytotoxic. Fractions 1 and 2 of
the MeOH extract were non-cytotoxic, whereas cytotoxicity was observed for
fractions 3 and 4 with IC50 values of 50 and 85 µg/mL, respectively.
Conclusion: The outcome of
the present study suggested that the JP
leaves possess cytotoxic activities. The high level of cytotoxicity
of the n-hexane and DCM extracts
suggested that lipophilicity might affect the cytotoxicity of JP, where the less polar compounds had the strongest cytotoxicity.