Investigation of cytotoxic/apoptotic effects different species of apricot in Malatya

Recently, functional foods have been widely used in the treatment of various health problems including cancer. Cytotoxic/apoptotic properties of Malatya apricots as a functional food is highly important to reveal. Therefore, in the scope of this thesis, varieties of commonly grown apricots in Malatya, namely Hacıhaliloğlu, Hasanbey, Kabaaşı and Soğancı were studied. Methanol and acetone extracts of raw, ripe and dried apricots are prepared from these four varieties. Cytotoxic/apoptotic activities of these prepared extracts on MCF-7 and Caco-2 cell line were determined by using MTT, Wound Healing and acridine orange (AO)/ethidium bromide (EB) staining tests. In addition to that, sugar levels were measured by HPLC-RI. According to MTT test results performed on MCF-7 cell line for 24 and 48 hours application time, the lowest IC50 values were determined as 3.9 and 0.5 mg/mL in the acetone extracts of dried and raw Kabaaşı apricots, respectively. In the Caco-2 cell line, the lowest IC50 values for 24 and 48 hours application time were measured as 3.59 and 1.95 mg/mL in the acetone extracts of dried Kabaaşı apricots, respectively. In Wound Healing test, which was made by using the lowest IC50 values with apricot extracts, the opened slit in the control group of Caco-2 cells closed at the level of about 70%. In the Caco-2 cells treated with apricot, the opened slit was opened in the range of 10-30% at the end of 24 hours. In the MCF-7 cell line, while the level of the slit opening in the control group closed at approximately 80%, the slit opening in apricot-treated cells opened in the range of 0-12%. Also, cell death and apoptotic formation were seen morphologically in the images obtained from AO/EB staining method, which was performed to demonstrate the cytotoxic/apoptotic properties of the apricot extract. In addition, the amounts of sugar in the raw, ripe and dried apricot extracts were measured in the range of 32.9-54.3, 72.7-84.9 and 63.6-76.3 g/100 g dried mass, respectively. As a result, the extracts of Malatya apricot independently from the amount of sugar were determined to have strong cytotoxic/apoptotic properties in Caco-2 and MCF-7 cells.