Background: During the past few years, HESA-A, a herbal-marine mixture, has been used to treat cancer as an alternative medicine in Iran. However, weight of the evidence is not sufficient to accept or refuse the use of this compound as a cytotoxic drug. We investigated the selective anticancer effects of HESA-A on breast, prostate, colon, and glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) neoplastic cell lines.
Methods: MTT-based cytotoxicity assay was performed on HCT-116 (colon adenocarcinoma), MCF-7 (breast adenocarcinoma), PC-3 (prostate adenocarcinoma), U-87MG (GBM), and HDF-1 (normal dermal fibroblast) cell lines using different concentrations of HESA-A (0, 1, 3.3, 10, 33 and 100 µg/ml) and doxorubicin as positive control (10 µM). If there was seen an inhibitory response, median inhibitory concentration (IC50) was determined. We defined the cytotoxicity as the extrapolated IC50 became equal to or lower than 50 µg/ml.
Results: HESA-A at the highest concentration (100 µg/mL) significantly inhibited the growth of HCT-116 cell line (P = 0.003; compared to control) .Percentage growth inhibition of HESA-A at this concentration was determined as 40.13%. IC50 of this compound on HCT-116 cell line was extrapolated 117.28 µg/mL. There were no statistically significant differences between the mean absorbance measures of HESA-A treated groups in other cell lines.
Conclusion: This study showed that HESA-A doesnʹt fulfill the predetermined criterion of cytotoxic agents. More preclinical investigations are needed to assess the efficacy of HESA-A in cancer.