cytotoxic activity of the root of euphorbia tehranica ethanolic extract against caco-2 colorectal cancer cell line

Introduction: efforts are made to identify the new potential components such as anticancer drugs. medicinal plants belonging to euphorbia genus are widely studied with promising effects. the current study aimed at investigating the effect of ethanolic extract of the root of e. tehranica, grown in iran, on caco-2 human colorectal cancer cell-line. methods: the caco-2 cells were treated with different concentrations of the root of e. tehranica ethanolic extract (25 to 1200 μg/ml) at 24 and 48 hours. cell growth was evaluated with mtt assay. anticancer activity of the ethanolic extract was assessed by evaluating the cell viability. cell viability was determined at the wavelength of 570 nm by mtt method. the ic_50 (half maximal inhibitory concentration) was determined graphically. one-way anova followed by tukey’s post-test; and p values <0.05 were considered statistically significant. results: the findings showed the significant cytotoxic effect of the root of e. tehranica ethanolic extract against caco-2 cell-lines (p ≤0.05). therefore, the viability of caco-2 cells reduced with the dose and time-dependent manner, when compared with that of the control group. also, the differences between the ic_50 in 24 and 48 hours were 850 and 855 μg/ml, respectively. conclusions: it was the first study on the effect of the root of e. tehranica ethanolic extract on human colon cancer cell-lines. the results showed that this extract had the capacity to inhibit proliferation of tumor cells. therefore, it seems to be a good candidate to defend against cancer cells.