antioxidant and anticancer activities of anethum graveolens l., citrus limon (l.) osbeck and zingiber officinale roscoe essential oils

Since synthetic chemotherapeutic drugs produce a certain degree of drug resistance and due to their common side effects, such as damage to hematopoietic cells and hair loss, it is necessary to use herbal medicine as a substrate to develop new anticancer drugs. the ingredients of three essential oils (eo) were identified using gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (gc-ms) analysis. their anticancer activities have been investigated on four human breast cancer cell lines, including mcf-7, mda-mb-175, mda-mb-231, and mda-mb-468. in addition, their antioxidant activity was evaluated using the 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (dpph) assay. the three plants were investigated for identifications of the ingredients of their eos, and major ingredients were identified in each plant as alpha-phellandrene (26.75 %) in anethum graveolens l., limonene (61.83 %) in citrus limon (l.) osbeck, and zingiberene (30.28 %) in zingiber officinale roscoe. among the eos, c. limon was significantly more effective than others; its half-maximal inhibitory concentration (ic50) on mcf-7 was obtained at 201 μg.ml-1. furthermore, z. officinale eo showed a higher antioxidant activities in comparison to the two other eos. considering the antioxidant and anticancer effects of the eos, they could be further investigated as a possible complementary medicine in cancer.