Investigating the cytotoxic activities of some plant extracts on mammalian cell cultures in vitro

Nowadays essential oils and isolated from its terpenoid compounds ofextracted from various plants have different biological activities. In this case, theyare used in drug, food and cosmetics industries. In this study, cytotoxic activity ofsome essential oils and monoterpenes obtained from some plants investigatedwith MTT, Neutral Red Uptake and colony formation assays on A549, V79 378Aand CHO cell lines. It?s found that 1,8 cineole has low cytotoxic effect at treatedconcentrations. Thymol, carvacrol and menthol demostrated that time andconcentration based cytotoxic effect. It was resulted that other test compoundsLaurus nobilis (bay-leaf), Salvia fruticosa (sage), Pimpinella anisum (anise) andOriganum onites (thyme) essential oils have concentration based cytotoxic effect.It is thought that the results about of monoterpens and essential oils would lead forthe future investigations about using antineoplastic therapy and in vivo.Keywords: Essential oils, Monoterpenes, Colony formation, MTT, Neutral Red(NR)