Anticancer screening of medicinal plants growing in the Northern region of Saudi Arabia

Background: Desert condition in which plants grow and survive and altering biochemical properties of plants are known to increase the secondary metabolite induction in a variety of medicinal plants. Cancer is a terrible disease and fighting it is of abundant significance to public health. Aims and Objective: To search for new compounds with cytotoxic activity isolated from natural source. In this article, we studied the anticancer properties of three plants (Farsetia aegyptia, Lactuca serriola, and Santolina chamaecyparissus) growing under desert condition of the Northern Region of Saudi Arabia. Materials and Methods: Hydromethanol extracts of the plants were investigated in vitro against four different cell lines. Anticancer activities were assayed with standard 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) colorimetric procedure against A549, HCT116, Hep G2, and MCF7 cell lines. Result : From the analysis, it was found that Lactuca and Santolina sp. showed 71% and 66% cytotoxic activity against Hep G2 and inhibited cell line at 100 mg/mL tested dose; F. aegyptia showed 74% cytotoxic activity against A549 and inhibited cell line at 100 mg/mL. But, the three plants did not show much anticancer activity against HCT116 cancer cell line. Methanol extracts were subjected to gas chromatographymass spectrophotometry (GC-MS) in order to evaluate the chemical constituents of these plants. Conclusion: It can be concluded that, in F. aegyptia, L. serriola, and S. chamaecyparissus, which grow undrer dry desert condition of Northern Borders Region, the stress condition makes the plant accumulate active compounds that possess anticancer properties against nonsmall cell lung adenocarcinoma and human hepatocellular liver carcinoma.