Investigating the Anticancer Properties of the Essential Oil and Aqueous Extract of Moringa oleifera and its Biosynthesized Metal Nanoparticles on MCF-7 and BT-549 Cell Lines

In recent years, with the advancement of nanotechnology, new methods have been invented to treat cancer. The Moringa plant (Moringa oleifera) is rich in flavonoid compounds, especially quercetin, which has anticancer and antioxidant properties. In this research, the characteristics of metal nanoparticles of Iron, Copper, Zinc, and Silver biosynthesized from the aqueous extract of the M. oleifera plant were studied, and then the effect of the essential oil and aqueous extract obtained from the aerial parts of this plant and the synthesized metal nanoparticles on the growth and survival of cancer cell lines MCF-7 and BT-549 were investigated.

In this research, after the biosynthesis of metal nanoparticles such as iron, copper, zinc, and silver from the aqueous extract of the plant M. oleifera and checking their properties in terms of size with the help of Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS) and verifying the structure with the help of Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrometer (FTIR), the number of secondary compounds of the essential oil (using Gas chromatography-Mass spectrophotometry (GC-Mass)) and the aqueous extract of Moringa plant (with the help of HPLC) were investigated. , the anticancer properties of the essential oil and aqueous extract of the plant M. oleifera and its biosynthesized metal nanoparticles were evaluated on two cell lines, MCF-7 and BT-549. The experiment was conducted in a completely randomized design with three replications. GraphPad Prism8 and FlowJ softwares were used to check cell viability and flow cytometry results, respectively.

According to the results obtained from DLS, the sizes of iron, copper, zinc, and silver nanoparticles were 35, 32, 33, and 34 nm, respectively. According to the results obtained in this research, the IC50 value of MCF-7 and BT-549 cell lines was significantly affected by the type of treatment used at the probability level of 1%. The highest amount of IC50 (35.9 μL/mL) corresponds to the MCF-7 cell line treated with the essential oil obtained from the aerial parts of the Moringa plant. Furthermore, in this research, it was found that the percentage of necrotic cells, and the percentage of cells in the pre-apoptotic and post-apoptotic stage of the MCF-7 and BT-549 cell lines were significantly affected by the type of treatment used at the probability level of 1%. In the case of the MCF-7 cell line, the highest percentage of necrotic cells, cells located in the pre-and post-apoptotic stage (2.03, 3.42, and 22.5 percent), respectively, related to the control treatment, aqueous extract obtained from aerial parts, and synthesized copper nanoparticles from aqueous extract were obtained. Meanwhile, the highest percentage of necrotic cells, cells located in the pre-and post-apoptotic stage of the BT-549 cell line (6.33, 4.32, and 17.56 percent) were related to the control treatment, biosynthesized copper nanoparticles from the aqueous extract.

According to the results obtained in this research, the copper nanoparticle biosynthesized from the Moringa plant aqueous extract had the highest anticancer effect on MCF-7 and BT-549 cell lines.