The concurrent effect of acyclovir and rosemary on glioblastoma cell culture

Abstract

Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) is a beta herpesvirus which large amount of people in world has interacted with. Recent studies indicated that CMV DNA is associated with several cancer types including "Glioblastoma (GBM)" which is the most common and aggressive type of primary brain cancer. In clinical studies it was shown that several antiviral medicines prolonged life span of glioblastoma patients. One of them is Acyclovir (ACV) which is a type of nucleoside analog, used to cure viral infections and might be a potential treatment supplement for Glioblastoma. In this study we aimed to investigate if ACV had cytotoxic effect on glioblastoma cell line U87 MG and also the effect of ACV on healthy cells. Furthermore it was aimed to search the effect of Rosmarinus Officinalis also known as rosemary which is an aromatic, perennial plant concurrent with ACV on glioblastoma and healthy cells.

Evaluation of cytotoxic activity and anticancer potential of indigenous Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis L.) and Oregano (Origanum vulgare L.) dry extracts on MG-63 bone osteosarcoma human cell line

“…Our results agree with other reports that confirmed the cytotoxic effect of Rosemary leaves extracts on different cancer cell lines [AGS – human gastric carcinoma, KYSE 30 – human esophageal squamous cell carcinoma, HT-29 – colon adenocarcinoma; (GBM) U87 MG – glioblastoma] [ 55 , 56 , 57 ]. Other authors reported cytotoxic activity of O. vulgare essential oil and its main constituents (carvacrol, thymol, limonene) on hepatocellular carcinoma cell line (HepG2) [ 20 ].…”

Neuroprotective Potential of Aromatic Herbs: Rosemary, Sage, and Lavender

“…The combination of rosemary and acyclovir reduced the survival by 10% more. A 52.7% reduction in the viability of GBM was seen in the acyclovir group (Özdemir and Göktürk, 2019 ).…”

The effects of Acyclovir administration to NCI-H1975 non-small cell lung cancer cells

“…The first enzyme is involved in developing immunosuppressive lymphocytes and immunologic tolerance in the tumour microenvironment (Godin-Ethier et al, 2011); the latter is involved in the targeted degradation of various growth and survival factors via ubiquitin-mediated pathway (Frescas and Pagano, 2008). Accordingly, the in vitro suppressive effect of ACV on MCF-7 breast cancer cells, Jurkat leukaemia cells, and U87 MG glioblastoma cells has been recently reported (Shaimerdenova et al, 2017;Benedetti et al, 2018;Özdemir and Göktürk, 2019), demonstrating ACV ability to affect cancer cell viability and sustaining its potential as adjuvant therapy in cancer treatment.…”

“…The relevant biochemical mechanisms by which ACV may induce anticancer effects even without the detection of HHVs (Benedetti et al, 2018;Özdemir and Göktürk, 2019) that could mediate the intracellular phosphorylation of ACV via viral kinases rendering it capable of blocking DNA synthesis (Schaeffer, 1982;Elion, 1993), are still poorly understood. Early studies showed that low detectable phosphorylated ACV levels could be present within cells even in the absence of viral thymidine kinases (McMahon et al, 2011), indicating that endogenous kinases could phosphorylate the drug.…”