Author(s): Hamid A Bakshi, Faruck Lukmanul Hakkim, Smitha Sam and Mohammed Al-Buloshi

Abstract: Cervical cancer is the second leading cause of death in women followed by breast cancer. Chemotherapy is the most feasible format to handle but their clinical consequences such as tumor relapse, drug resistance accompanied with severe toxicity is uncontrollable. Developing non-toxic chemo drug is major goal of cancer researchers. Medicinal herbs and plants remain as important source of drugs. In this study we explored in vitro anti-cancer potential of Crocus sativus (common name - Saffron) extract (CSE) on cervical cancer cells (HEp-2) and to study their in vivo toxicity profile in normal Swiss albino mice. HEp-2 and Vero cell viability was measured by MTT assay and morphology of cells was observed after 24 h of treatment of CSE (25, 50, 75 and 100 µg/ml). CSE elicit considerable dose-dependent cell death on HEp-2 cells whereas vero cells survived after 24 h of treatment. Further HEp-2 cells lost their adherence and morphology significantly after 24 h of treatment. In vivo toxicity profile by histological studies revealed no observable histopathologic differences in the liver, kidney, spleen, lungs and heart of CSE treated and untreated groups. Further we found that crocin is the principal component of CSE extract by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Thus our present study compels us to continue to examine the effects of CSE on other human and murine neoplasms with the final goal of transforming this formulation to clinic. However, more detailed mechanistic studies are needed to fully delineate the role of C. sativus in cancer treatment.