Author(s)

Khadidja Haïdara, Amal Alachkar, Ala-Eddin Al Moustafa

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Department of Mechanical Engineering, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada.

Lung cancer is the first common malignancy worldwide; in view of the limited success of available treatment modalities for this cancer, alternative and complementary strategies need to be developed. On the other hand, Teucrium polium (TP) is a medicinal plant that has been used for more than two thousand years for treating many diseases such as abdominal pain, indigestion and diabetes in the Middle East. However, the effect of TP plant extract on hu-man non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) has not been investigated yet. In this study, we exam-ined the effects of TP extract on cell prolifera-tion, cell cycle progression and cell death in H322 and A549 lung cell lines. Our results show that TP plant extract inhibits cell proliferation and deregulates cell cycle progression. More importantly, TP plant extract causes a dramatic cell death in both cell lines in comparison with untreated cells. Our data suggest that this plant extract could have an important therapeutic role in the treatment of human NSCLC.

Teucrium Polium Plant Extract; Lung Cancer; Cell Death

Haïdara, K. , Alachkar, A. and Moustafa, A. (2011) Teucrium polium plant extract provokes significant cell death in human lung cancer cells. Health, 3, 366-369. doi: 10.4236/health.2011.36062.