Anticancer activity and chemical composition of dry extract from Moroccan chamomile (Matricaria chamomilla L.)

Abstract

Breast cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer-related fatalities among women. Recently, the role of phytochemicals in the prevention and treatment of cancer has received increasing attention. The medicinal plant Matricaria chamomilla L. is well known for its use in traditional medicine to treat a variety of illnesses, due to the presence of diverse phytochemicals with remarkable biological properties. Herein, this study aimed to explore the anticancer property and chemical composition of four parts of M. chamomilla (roots, stems, leaves, and flowers) growing in northern Morocco. The anticancer activity of methanolic extracts were determined in vitro against PC-3 prostate cancer cells, MCF-7 breast cancer cells, and non-tumoral MRC-5 cells, applying the MTT test and microscopic visualization, while the phytochemicals composition was characterized by HPLC-MS and GC-MS techniques. Our results indicated that the plant extracts possess cytotoxicity activity on PC-3 and MCF-7 cells, with the strongest effect obtained with the flower extract, which induced a cell inhibition of around 60 %. In addition, the extracts showed an acceptable biosafety profile against normal cells when used at a concentration below 500 µg/mL. The HPLC-MS analysis of the extracts allowed the identification of 22 phenolic compounds in the flowers and roots, and 23 in the leaves and stems. Furthermore, the GC-MS chromatograms of M. chamomilla flower, leaf, stem, and root extracts revealed the presence of 55, 52, 48, and 44 components, respectively. The identified biomolecules can be mainly divided into fatty acids, terpenoids, esters, amino acids, organic acids, vitamins, and other groups. The most abundant group was fatty acids in the flower (56.00 %), leaves (55.08 %), and stems (48.27 %), while vitamin (18.01 %) was found to be the major biomolecule group in roots. These findings showed that M. chamomilla extracts revealed promising antitumor properties provided by their phytochemical composition.