MUTAGENIC AND ANTIMUTAGENIC EFFECTS OF ARTEMISIA HERBA ALBA EXTRACT USING DROSOPHILA AND HUMAN CANCER CELL LINES

Abstract

The current study aims to the assessment of the mutagenic and/or anti-mutagenic effect of Artemisia herba alba (AHA) crude extract. In vivo assay, Drosophila melanogaster SMART assay that can detect loss of heterozygosity (LOH) in somatic cell which is a major step involved in the formation of tumors used to evaluate the mutagenic and/or anti- mutagenic effect of the AHA methanolic extract as one of medicinal plants. The tumor size and number on Drosophila body were significantly different among the different treatments which including mitomycin C (MMC), crude extract of AHA, pre and post treatments, in addition to the negative control. Both MMC and AHA extract showed high significant mutagenic effect in this assay. On the other hand, AHA was capable to significantly reduce the mutagenic effect of MMC. These results indicated that AHA has a mutagenic and anti-mutagenic effect on Drosophila. In vitro assays, using four human cell lines, liver cancer cells (HepG2) and liver normal cells (THLE2), (lung tumor cells A549 and lung normal cells) were employed to investigate the cytotoxicity of Artemisia herba alba by [3-(4,5-Dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5- diphenyltetrazolium bromide] MTT assay. The results indicated that Artemisia herba alba crude extract induced anti-proliferative effects and high cytotoxicity on human cancer cell lines and no cytotoxic activity on normal cell lines was observed. The half-maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) observed in the human hepatocellular carcinoma (HepG2) and lung cancer cell line (A549) were 50.34μg/ml and 29.23μg/ml, respectively. Moreover, flow cytometric analysis of propidium iodide staining indicated that the treatment of HepG2 cells with AHA led to substantial elevation of G2/M phase cell cycle arrest.