anti-proliferative activity of fumaria vaillantii extracts on different cancer cell lines

plant-derived natural products are known to have cancer chemo-preventive and chemo-therapeutic properties. plant extracts or their active constituents are used as folk medicine in traditional therapies by 80% of the world population. the aim of the present study was to determine the anti-proliferative potential of fumaria vaillantii extracts on three different cancer cell lines including malignant melanoma skmel-3, human breast adenocarcinoma mcf-7 and human myelogenous leukemia k562 as well as human gingival fibroblast (hgf) as normal cell line. anti-proliferative activity was evaluated by 3-(4,5- di methyl thiazol -2-yl)-2,5-di phenyl tetrazolium bromide (mtt), flowcytometry and annexin methods. total phenolics and flavonoids were determined by folin-ciocalteu and aluminum chloride methods. chloroform fraction had the lowest ic 50 value at 72 h (0.1 µg/ml) in mcf-7 cells. flowcytometry and annexin-v analysis indicated that the chloroform fraction induced necrosis in mcf-7 cells. in addition, the colorimetric methods showed that the methanolic fraction possessed the highest amount of total phenolics (33.03 ± 0.75 mg/g of dry powder) and flavonoids (10.5 ± 2.0 mg/g of dry powder).the collective data demonstrated that f. vaillantii chloroform fraction may contain effective compounds with chemo-therapeutic potential act through an apoptotic independent pathway.