Cytotoxic and apoptotic effects of essential oil and chemical compounds from myrtus communis l. using cell culture based model system on MCF7,MCF10 and BJ cell lines

A number of studies have been done for the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer, the most common type of cancer in women.In recent years,interest in antimutagenic and antioxidant activities of the components in plants have been increasing.Therefore,aim of our study is to use essential oil extracted from Myrtus communis (gift from Hatay,Mustafa Kemal University) to assess the potential antitumorigenic activity of this extract.For this, assay will be used in which the human breast cancer tumor cell line MCF7 will be exposed to increasing doses in these oil and the toxicity will be tested using the MTT assay.To find out whether this toxicity has tumor specific characteristic,the same doses of the extract will be applied to cell culture of human non-tumorigenic MCF10A cells.In case,that therapeutic window can be found this concentration will also be tested in the non-epithelial cells namely human BJ fibroblast in order to see whether there is only possible cell types selectivity of the effect.In paralel,characterization compound will be applied in pure form in these assays to identify if the biological activity observed is linked to one or several these substances (1,8-cineole ,α-Pinene,linalool) to asses the bases of the biological effect. To understand whether the essential oil and these three chemical compounds used stimulate apoptosis, expression levels of the Caspase 3, Caspase 9, Bcl-2 and Bax genes in the MCF7 and MCF10A cell lines will be examined by RT-qPCR method