Introduction: Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women and in recent years has been growing in Iran.Chemical treatments have significant effects of cancer and the use of medicinal plants is one of the most constructive way that creates the least side effects.Tarragon herb Artemisia family due to high levels of antioxidant compounds suitable source for pharmaceutical use to treat and prevent the progression of cancer.
Methods: After collecting and drying the samples,extraction process was done by ethanol.MC4L2 cancer cell lines were incubated with different concentrations of ethanol extract for 36 and 48 hours and cell growth inhibition was determined using MTT and trypan blue assay. All the data were analyzed by SPSS software by one-way ANOVA followed by post hoc test TUKEY . In all analyses p0.05 was considered significant.
Results: In testing MTT and trypan blue there was no significant difference in cell apoptosis between plate which had treated with concentration of 25 compared with negative control plate but there were significant increase cell apoptosis between in plates which had treated with concentration of 50 and 100 or 150 compared with negative control plate. concentrations were constant in each test plate and the time was variable. In this experiment there were significant difference cell apoptosis between concentration of 50 for 36 and 48 hours compared with concentration of 25 for 36 and 48 hours.Also there was significant difference in concentration of 100 between 36 and 48 hours.In concentration of 150 there was significant difference between two times for 36 and 48 hours.
Conclusion: In testing MTT and trypan blue cell apoptosis was increased with increasing concentration and time. the ethanol extract of tarragon has anti-cancer activity against breast cancer cell line MC4L2.