The Anti-Proliferative Activity of Lyophilised Medicinal Leech (Hirudo Verbana) Saliva Extract on Breast Cancer Cell Line (MCF-7)

Abstract

Cancer is the leading cause of death and morbidity globally and is the second leading cause of death after cardiovascular disease. Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women with a mortality rate of 18 per cent and this rate is increasing. Cancer treatments used in modern medicine can have negative side effects. Medical leech saliva contains anti-proteolytic, platelet aggregation inhibitors, anticoagulant enzymes and anti-metastasic agents as natural compounds with fewer side effects. In this study, it was aimed to investigate the anti-proliferation of different concentrations of lyophilised medicinal leech secretion extract on MCF-7 (breast cancer) cancer cell lines. For this purpose, cell viability test (XTT) was performed to determine the cytotoxicity after application of various concentrations of medical leech secretion to the cell lines for 24 and 48 hours and the percentage viability of cancer cells was determined at each leech secretion concentration. The IC50 value of leech secretion on MCF-7 cell line was calculated as 490.61 µg/ml at 24 hours and 407.04 µg/ml at 48 hours depending on time and dilution rate. It was observed that the anti-proliferation effect of leech secretion applied at different doses on cell viability in MCF-7 cancer cell line increased as the dose amount increased and the duration increased.