Ginger Extract as Potent Anti-Cancer Agent against Breast Cancer

Abstract

Ginger has been renowned for its therapeutic powers, such as immuno-modulatory, antioxidant, antiinflammation, and anti-carcinogenic qualities. It is well known that anti-cancer therapies are unable to differentiate between cancer and normal cells, that could lead to subpar therapeutic outcomes and serious side effects. In this regard, we investigated the anti-cancer features of ginger extract in MCF-7 cell line for breast cancer. In order to achieve our goal, MTT assay was carried out to study the Cell growth viability with various concentrations of ethanolic ginger extract (0, 12, 25, 50, 100 and 200 µg/ml) for 24 hours and IC50 was 49.7 µg/ml. Also, flow cytometry followed by Annexin V-FITC was carried out to study the cell cycle analysis and confirm the apoptosis induced by ginger extract. According to the IC50, the (0, 25, 50 and 100 µg/ml) concentrations for 24 hours were chosen. The cell cycle analysis showed that treatment 3 is the best concentration from ginger ethanolic extract to arrest cell at G2/M stage (37.72%) comparing to control (8.4%). Data obtained from the Annexin V-FITC revealed that there was significant difference in early and late apoptosis between control and treatment, which increase in treatments. Finally, at the molecular level, the study of the gene expression demonstrated that with increasing the ginger dose, the P53 gene expression was significantly up-regulated, and the Bcl-2 gene expression was downregulated with significant difference. Our data demonstrated that ginger extract has the ability to promote apoptosis in MCF-7 cells.