The in vivo antitumor activity of the essential oil of N. sativa L. seed was tested onDBA2/P815 (H2 d) mouse model. A reduction tumor volume was observed afterinjection of the essential oil into the tumor site after 30 days of treatment. This treatmentalso seemed to reduce the liver metastasis development (Ait Mbarek et al.2007).
Anticancer Research
N. sativa, black cumin, is a herbal plant that has been widely used for variousmedicinal and nutritional purposes. Human lung cancer cells were exposed to N.sativa essential oil and cell viability was measured by NRU assay, in a study conductedby Al-Sheddi et al. (2014). On exposure to N. sativa essential oil, cell viabilitydecreased and the cell morphology of A-549 was altered, while essential oilconcentrations of 0.1 mg/ml or more, for 24 h, were found to be cytotoxic. By usingMTT assay, the decrease in cell viability at 1 mg/ml of NSO was found to be 13%.There was a loss of characteristic cell morphology as well as a decrease in size withA-549 human lung cancer cells exposed to 0.25, 0.5, and 1 mg/ml of N. sativaessential oil. Black cumin essential oil was shown to help in reducing human lungcancer cell viability (Ait Mbarek et al. 2007; Al-Sheddi et al. 2014). Thymoquinone (TQ) is the main constituent of black cumin essential oil withpromising in vitro antineoplastic activities in different tumor cell lines (Ichwan et al.2014). Thymoquinone has been revealed in recent studies to give protection againstdoxorubicin-induced cardiotoxicity. In some cancer cell lines (Effenberger-Neidnichtand Schobert 2010), thymoquinone can act as a booster for the anticancereffect of doxorubicin (chemotherapy agent). Ichwan et al. (2014) report that thymoquinonestimulated distinct apoptotic pathways in two human cervical cell lines,Siha and C33A. Periasamy et al. (2016) used a N. sativa essential oil nanoemulsion(NSEO-NE) preparation on human cancer cells using a modified methyl-thiazolyl-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay, as well as cellular uptake and nuclearmorphological analyses. The NSEO-NE significantly reduced the viability ofMichigan Cancer Foundation-7 (MCF-7) breast cancer cells. The nucleocytoplasmicmorphological features of NSEO-NE-treated cells clearly indicate that NSEO-NE-inducedapoptosis in MCF-7 cells.
