ABSTRACT

Background: Quercetin is an effective cytotoxic anticancer agent and has been used for the treatment of variety of malignancies. The aim of the current study is to investigate the influence of Quercetin on squamous cell carcinoma cell line (HEP-2) after 24 hours.

Material& methods: Treatment of cell line (HEp-2) by different concentrations of Quercetin was done to assess the viability of the treated cells to determine the percentages of viable cells that was monitored using MTT assay.

Results: the mean viability percentage of Quercetin treated cells (in relation to control cells) increased as Quercetin concentration decreased from 640 mM to 5mM with an IC50 of 200 mM. Regarding the cytotoxic effect of Quercetin and related cell cycle profile it was noticed that cell distribution showed a variable percent of arrest at different phase of cell division profile, Where there was non significant difference of arrested cells of Quercetin pre and post treatment compared with its value in non treated G0-G1 phase control cells(P>0.05) and S phase as well. While there was a significant elevated arrest of treated cells during the G2-M phase (P<0.05) and the significant difference of cell arrest at G2-M phase was type of treatment related .

Conclusion: From the results of the current study, we found that Quercetin has cytotoxic effect on squamous cell carcinoma, (HEp-2) cell line, It also induced an effect on the cell cycle distribution, and Quercetin has effect on (HEp-2) cell line resulting in apoptosis and necrosis.