Antiproliferative Effect of Ornithogalum balansae on Human Cancer Cell Lines

The purpose of this study was to investigate the antiproliferative effect of the methanol and ethyl acetate extracts of Ornithogalum balansae flower and bulb against normal ARPE-19 cell line and cancer cell lines, A549, CRL-2923, HT-29 and HeLa. The cytotoxic activities of the extracts were determined using cell viability, deoxyribonucleic acid fragmentation and caspase-3 activity tests. Flower and bulb extracts exhibited dose-dependent antiproliferative effects on non-transformed and transformed cells, with greater growth inhibition in A549 lung cancer cells at lower concentrations. The IC50 values of the flower extracts against A549 cells were 1.5 +/- 0.153 and 2.2 +/- 0.503 mu g/ml, and of the bulb extracts were 1.8 +/- 0.220 and 1.56 +/- 0.106 mu g/ml, respectively. Against ARPE-19 cell line the IC50 values were 22.5 +/- 6.466 and 25 +/- 2.887 mu g/ml for flower and 14 +/- 4.726 and 12.5 +/- 3.182 mu g/ml for bulb extracts, respectively. In addition, it was observed that at concentrations <= 3.12 mu g/ml there were statistically significant differences between ARPE-19 and transformed A549 cell lines (p<0.05). Finding caspase-3 activity of the methanol flower extract in A549 indicated apoptotic effects in those cells. These results showed that Ornithogalum balansae extracts could exhibit antitumor activity particularly on the A549 lung cancer cell line, a resistant cell line. Further investigations of the composition of the extracts are required to identify the effective components with antiproliferative activity, particularly on A549, the human alveolar adenocarcinoma cancer cell line. This study revealed that extracts of Ornithogalum balansae possessed considerable antiproliferative activity against A549 cells.