O. basilicum (basil) is native to Iran and India (Benzie and Wachtel-Galor 2011). Ina study of Manosroi et al. (2006), antiproliferative activities of essential oil from O.basilicum and other 16 Thai medicinal plants on human mouth epidermal carcinoma(KB) and murine leukemia (P388) cell lines by MTT assay were checked. InP388 cell line, the O. basilicum essential oil had the highest antiproliferative effect,which is 12.7 times less potent than the 5-FU (thymin antagonist 5-fluorouracil). AnMTT assay was also conducted to find in vitro cytotoxicity of O. basilucum essentialoil against the HeLa (human cervical cancer cell line), NIH 3 T3 mouse embryonicfibroblasts and Hep-2 (human laryngeal epithelial carcinoma cell line). TheIC50 values obtained were 90.5, 120.7, and 96.3 mg/ml, respectively. The majorconstituents of basil essential oil from fresh leaves were investigated to be linalool(17.50%), β-elemene (2.60%), camphor (1.52%), and methyl cinnamate (70.10%)(Kathirvel and Ravi 2012). Thus, it is revealed from their study that basil oil can beused as a therapeutic drug against cancer (Kathirvel and Ravi 2012). The cytotoxicactivities of O. basilicum essential oil were examined on nasopharyngeal cancer cellline (KB) and liver hepatocellular carcinoma cell line (HepG2) by Shirazi et al.(2014). IC50 for KB and HepG2 were 45±4 and 40±3μg/ml, respectively. On thebasis of these results, O. basilicum essential oil could be a promising candidate forantitumor drug design. However, the antiproliferative potential of O. basilicum andother Greek aromatic plant species essential oils was tested against a panel of humancancer cell lines and evaluated by using the sulforhodamine B (SRB) assay. Allessential oil preparations exhibited a variable degree of antiproliferative activity,depending on the cancer model used, with the most potent one being sweet basilagainst an in vitro model of human colon carcinoma (Fitsiou et al. 2016).
