Evaluation of antioxidant properties of essential oil, aqueous extract and metal nanoparticles biosynthesized from F. vulgare and their anticancer effect on two breast cancer cell lines (Sum-159, Hs-578T)

Breast cancer is still the most common cancer among women all over the world. Using surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy is known as the best traditional method to treat this disease. In recent years, with the advancement of nanotechnology in medical science and treatment, new methods of cancer treatment have been investigated. Considering the medicinal and therapeutic properties of F.vulgare due to the presence of valuable compounds such as flavonoids for the treatment of cancer, in this research, first, the morphological and structural characteristics of metal nanoparticles biosynthesized from the aqueous extract of F.vulgare were discussed, then the antioxidant and anticancer properties of essential oil, aqueous extract of this plant and the biosynthesized nanoparticles were investigated.

In this research, after the biosynthesis of iron, copper, zinc, and silver nanoparticles from the aqueous extract of fennel plant (F. vulgare) and their properties in terms of size with XRD and confirmation of the structure by FTIR, the amount of secondary metabolites, the amount of antioxidant and anticancer activity of the essential oil And the aqueous extract of fennel plant (F. vulgare) and iron, copper, zinc and silver nanoparticles biosynthesized from it were evaluated on the Sum-159 and the Hs-578T cell lines.

According to the results obtained from DLS of biosynthesized metal nanoparticles, the sizes of iron, copper, zinc, and silver nanoparticles were 35, 32, 33, and 34 nm, respectively. The results of FTIR also confirmed the existence of the synthesized metal nanoparticles. Also, according to the results of HPLC and spectrophotometry, the presence of biochemical compounds such as flavonoid and anthocyanin and metabolites such as rutin, quercetin, and kaempferol in the aqueous extract of fennel plant was confirmed. In terms of antioxidant activity, a significant difference was observed between different treatments, it was also observed that with the increase in the concentration of the treatments, the amount of their antioxidant activity also increased, and the highest amount of antioxidant activity of each treatment was related to the highest concentration of each treatment. The highest amount of antioxidant activity (87.41%) was related to copper nanoparticles at a concentration of 500 mg/ml. In terms of the IC50 value of the mentioned treatments, it was also found that the Sum-159 cell line had higher resistance compared to the Hs-578T cell line against equal concentrations of different treatments.