Introduction: : Epithelial ovarian cancer is the most common type of cancer that remains asymptomatic until its metastasis. Due to the late diagnosis of ovarian cancer and the lack of effective therapeutic approaches, this malignancy has the highest mortality rate among female cancers. The conventional course of therapy includes radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Most cancers respond to both of them but in the long run reprogramming, angiogenesis, drug resistance, and side effects cause treatment failure. 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 93 %, 86%, 77% and 43% of cells were alive 24 h after administration of 5, 10, 20 and 40 µg/ml GA, respectively. Moreover, 88%, 79%, 69% and 17% of OVCAR-3 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, 78 %, 67%, 48% and 11% of cells were alive, respectively.
Conclusion: Since GA treatment decreased the viability of OVCAR-3 cells in a dose and time-dependent manner, it could be considered a potent toxic agent in anticancer studies.