Jian, Chin Tze
(2018)
The anticancer effect of local vernonia amygdalina in combination with standard chemotherapy drug, tamoxifen on breast cancer cell line, MCF-7.
Masters thesis, Universiti Sains Malaysia.
Abstract
Vernonia amygdalina (VA) is a broadly used local plant in Africa for both nutritional
and therapeutic purposes. Nevertheless, different geographical origins, locality,
climate conditions and time of harvesting could influence the biological activities of
the plant. Albeit of the advancement in medical field, the prevalence of breast cancer
still increases globally and many data have shown that among all the different types of
cancers, it is one of the cancers that contribute to the majority of the mortality.
Moreover, the risk and detrimental side effects of chemotherapy are fast compensating
its benefits. Therefore, this study focused on combination treatment of local VA and
tamoxifen towards breast cancer cell line, MCF7 in an effort to reduce the nonselective
effect on normal cells, NIH 3T3. The cytotoxicity activities of VA alone and
combination with tamoxifen towards MCF7 and NIH 3T3 cell lines were examined
using MTT assay. The IC50 values on MCF7 for VA (1.10 ± 1.78 mg/ml), tamoxifen
(0.06 ± 0.04 mg/ml) and combination (0.09 ± 0.10 mg/ml) were obtained. VA was
also found to be non-deleterious towards normal cells and had the IC50 values of NIH
3T3 raised in combination treatment (tamoxifen alone: 0.28 ± 0.22 mg/ml,
combination: 3.69 ± 2.74 mg/ml). Antagonistic combination (CI>1) was also
discovered between VA and tamoxifen. The combination treatment managed to have
an anti-proliferative effect on MCF7 cells and reduced toxicity on normal cells.Nuclear staining by Hoechst 33258 suggested the occurrence of apoptosis based on the
presence of bright fluorescence in the cells treated with combination treatment. In
conclusion, VA exhibited potential selective anticancer properties in MCF7 cells by
possibly inducing apoptotic cell death and it has a promising opportunity to be used
clinically at the future.
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