Anti-invasive effect of Catharanthus roseus extract on highly metastatic human breast cancer MDA-MB-231 cells

Catharanthus roseus (c. roseus) is an important medicinal plant contains a lot of useful alkaloids. the objective of this study is to determine the effect of catharanthus roseus leaves extract on the mda-mb-231 cancer cell invasion potential and matrix metalloproteinases activity (mmp-2 and mmp-9) in breast cancer cell lines,mda-mb-231 and mcf7. mts cytotoxicity assay was used to evaluate the cytotoxic effect of the extract against the two tumour cell lines. transwell invasion assay was used to investigate the invasive activity of mda-mb-231 cancer cell line and gelatin zymography was used to determine the effect of c. roseus extract on the activity of mmp-2 and mmp-9 on the two tumour cell lines. the result showed that c. roseus extract was found to be not cytotoxic for both tumor cell line,mda-mb-231 and mcf-7,with ic50 values more than 200μg/ml. however the extract showed significant inhibitory effect on mda-mb-231 invasion ability (p<0.001),and suppressed the mmp-2 and mmp-9 activity on both tumour cell lines. in conclusion,our findings show c. roseus as a promising therapeutic candidate that inhibits invasive ability of breast cancer through modulating mmp-2 and mmp-9 activity and could potentially suppress the progression of breast cancer. © 2016 penerbit utm press. all rights reserved.