Tropical Journal of Pharmaceutical Research

Original Research Article | OPEN ACCESS

Antiproliferative and proapoptotic activities of ferulic acid in breast and liver cancer cell lines

Mohammed ElKhazendar¹, Juhaina Chalak¹, Waseem El-Huneidi², Arya Vinod³, Wael M Abdel-Rahman⁴, Eman Abu-Gharbieh⁵

¹College of Medicine; ²Department of Basic Medical Sciences, College of Medicine; ³Sharjah Institute for Medical Research; ⁴Department of Medical Laboratory Sciences, College of Health Sciences, and Sharjah Institute for Medical Research; ⁵Department of Clinical Sciences, College of Medicine, University of Sharjah, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates.

For correspondence:- Eman Abu-Gharbieh Email: eabugharbieh@sharjah.ac.ae Tel:+97165057289

Accepted: 22 November 2019 Published: 31 December 2019

Citation: ElKhazendar M, Chalak J, El-Huneidi W, Vinod A, Abdel-Rahman WM, Abu-Gharbieh E. Antiproliferative and proapoptotic activities of ferulic acid in breast and liver cancer cell lines. Trop J Pharm Res 2019; 18(12):2571-2576 doi: 10.4314/tjpr.v18i12.16

© 2019 The authors.
This is an Open Access article that uses a funding model which does not charge readers or their institutions for access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) and the Budapest Open Access Initiative (http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read), which permit unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited..

Abstract

Purpose: To explore the potential anticancer activities of ferulic acid (4-hydroxy-3-methoxycinnamic acid, FA) on two different human cancers cell lines, viz, breast (MCF-7) and hepatocellular (HepG2).

Methods: MTT (3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide) cytotoxicity, Annexin V staining, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), as well as caspase-8 and -9 activation assays were used to evaluate the proapoptotic and antiproliferative potentials of ferulic acid (FA) on MCF-7 and HepG2 cell lines.

Results: Ferulic acid exerted cytotoxic effects on MCF-7 and HepG2 cell lines with half-maximal inhibitory concentration (IC₅₀) of 75.4 and 81.38 μg/mL, respectively, at 48 h. Annexin V staining revealed evidence of apoptosis. Caspase-8 and-9 levels were elevated in both cell lines after incubation with ferulic acid.

Conclusion: The findings of this study suggest that ferulic acid has promising therapeutic potentials for the treatment of breast and liver cancers by inducing apoptosis via activation of caspase-8 and -9 pathways.

Keywords: Ferulic acid, Apoptosis, Antiproliferative activity, Breast cancer, Caspase, Liver cancer