Introduction: Colorectal cancer is globally the second and third diagnosed cancer in women and men, respectively .Galbanic Acid (GA) is a sesquiterpene coumarin with many different medicinal properties that are distributed throughout the Mediterranean and Central Asia, which had previously been isolated from the roots of Ferula assa-foetida. GA exerts anticancer in association with antiangiogenic action, along with antiproliferative effects. This study evaluated the cytotoxicity of GA on ovarian cancer cells in vitro.
Methods: GA was extracted from Ferula szowitsiana. OVCAR-3 cells were treated with 5, 10, 20 and 40 µg/ml GA for 24, 48 and 72 h, while cells treated with 0.2% DMSO were considered as control. To assess the viability of cells, alamar blue was used and absorption was measured after 4 h at 600 nm.
Results: Cell viability assessment indicated that 83 %, 74%, 23% and 11% of cells were alive 24 h after administration of 5,10, 20 and 40 µg/ml GA, respectively. Moreover, 90%, 80%,57% and 14% of HT-29 cells were viable 48 h after 5,10, 20 and 40 µg/ml GA treatment, respectively. In addition, 72 h after treatment with 5,10, 20 and 40 µg/ml GA, 79 %, 73%,33% and 7% of cells were alive, respectively.
Conclusion: Since GA treatment decreased the viability of HT-29 cells in a dose and time-dependent manner, it could be considered a potent toxic agent in anticancer studies.