phytochemical composition of rosa foetida essential oil andevaluation of antioxidant and anti-oral squamous cancer activities

Background: rosa foetida is a popular plant in iran due to its various medicinal applications. objectives: in the present study, the essential oil of r. foetida flowers was isolated to identify the chemical composition and evaluate the anti-oral cancer and antioxidant activity of the plant extract. methods: the essential oil was extracted using the hydro-distillation method. the gc-ms technique was employed to identify the essential oil composition. the anti-cancer activity of the essential oil against oral squamous cell carcinoma was evaluated using an mtt assay. the antioxidant activity of the hydroalcoholic extract of the plant was evaluated using a dpph assay. results: the essential oil was dominated by heneicosane (27.72%), tricosane (24.30%), and nonadecane (14.75%). in the mtt assay, the essential oil exhibited dose-dependent activity against cell lines of hsc-2, hsc-3, hsc-4, and ca9-22. the highest anticancer activity of r. foetida essential oil was observed against the ca9-22 cell line with an ic50 of 218 µg/ml. the extract of r. foetida was rich in phenolics, with a total phenolic content of 164 ± 0.67 mg gallic acid equivalents (gae)/g. the extract scavenged the free radical of dpph with an ic50 of 6.54 ± 0.2 µg/ml. conclusions: the obtained results revealed an acceptable anti-cancer activity against oral squamous cell lines and potent antioxidant activity for the flowers of r. foetida.