Evaluation of Silibinin on the Viability of MCF-7 Human Breast Adenocarcinoma and HUVEC (Human Umbilical Vein Endothelial) cell lines

Breast cancer comprises 10.4% of all cancer incidences among women, making it the most common type of non-skin cancer in women and the fifth most common cause of cancer death. Silibinin, also known as silybin, is the major active constituent of silymarin. Silibinin has also demonstrated anticancer effects against human prostate adenocarcinoma cells, estrogen-dependent and – independent human breast carcinoma cells, human ectocervical carcinoma cells, human colon cancer cells, and both small and nonsmall human lung carcinoma cells. In the present study, MCF-7 and HUVEC cells were incubated with different concentrations of silibinin (100μg/ml, 150μg/ml and 200μg/ml) at 24h. Then cell cytotoxicity was assessed by MTT assay and IC50 was determined by Pharm software. The results showed that silibinin has dose-dependent inhibitory effect on the viability of MCF-7 cells and with the least inhibitory effect on the viability of normal cells (HUVEC). 284 M. Entezari et al