Evaluation of the cell cytotoxicity effect of Crocin obtained from Iranian saffron,against various breast cancer cells

More than 60 percent of anti-cancer drugs have herbal base and more natural products such as saffron ingredients showed chemopreventive and cytotoxic effect on cancer cells in recent decades. Crocin, as a carotenoid, is the most important and a potent ingredient of the saffron stigma against cancer. Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death and the most common malignancy among women. Crocin as a cancer therapeutic agent induces apoptosis in many types of cancers in vivo and in vitro. All freshly isolated normal and cancerous human epithelial cells from normal tissue (away from core of tumor) and human breast tumors were exposed to different concentrations of crocin at different time intervals. In this study, MTT assay was determined IC50 of crocin for these cells. All the primary cancer cells isolated in this study was died in the presence of crocin and there was no relation between their ER, PR and HER2 contents with IC50, which was in the range of 3500-4000 µg/ml. There was no cytotoxic effect of crocin against normal primary breast cells isolated from the normal breast tissue. The studies have shown that crocin as a saffron ingredient could be used as a chemotherapeutic agent against human breast cancer

Keywords:

Breast Cancer , Crocin , Saffron , MTT