Cancer Biology Department, National Cancer Institute, Cairo University, Egypt.
Pathology Department, National Cancer Institute, Cairo University, Egypt.
J Ethnopharmacol. 2019 Jun 28;238:111877. doi: 10.1016/j.jep.2019.111877. Epub 2019 Apr 14.
Luffa cylindrica (L.) M.Roem is a climbing plant its parts have been used as traditional medicine for the treatment of different types of diseases including diarrhea, inflammation, cancer and viral infections. The parts used include fruit, seeds and leaves.
Our study aims to investigate the effect of the aqueous-ethanol extract of Luffa cylindrica leaves on breast cancer stem cells CD44/24 and other cell sub-populations using clinical samples with different molecular sub-types of breast cancer in vitro.
Breast tissues were obtained from patients undergoing surgery for the removal of breast tumors after complete clinical and pathological investigations. Tissue samples were processed to cell suspensions and treated with the extract in the tissue culture laboratory. Percentages of cell sub-populations within tumors and viability were measured by flowcytometry using clusters of differentiation as cell markers.
Our results revealed that there were decreases in the total cell viability, CD44/24 and total CD24 cell sub-populations percentages after treatment with the extract, this may be an important indication of using Luffa leaves extract in the treatment of breast cancer or in combination with the traditional treatments.
Luffa cylindrica has proven to have anticancer activity on three different subtypes of breast cancer including luminal A, luminal B and Her2/neu enriched more over it has cytotoxic effect on both bulk tumor cells as well as cancer stem cells sub population CD44/24 which possess high tumorigenic potency, these results were confirmed by measuring their viable number after treatment and sphere formation assay results.
丝瓜（L.）M.Roem 是一种攀援植物，其各部分已被用作传统药物，用于治疗包括腹泻、炎症、癌症和病毒感染在内的不同类型的疾病。使用的部分包括果实、种子和叶子。
我们的研究旨在使用不同分子亚型乳腺癌的临床样本，体外研究丝瓜叶的水-乙醇提取物对乳腺癌干细胞 CD44/24 和其他细胞亚群的影响。
从接受手术切除乳房肿瘤的患者中获得乳房组织，在完成全面的临床和病理检查后。组织样本被处理成细胞悬浮液，并在组织培养实验室中用提取物处理。使用细胞标记物簇分化来通过流式细胞术测量肿瘤内细胞亚群和活力的百分比。
我们的结果表明，在用提取物处理后，总细胞活力、CD44/24 和总 CD24 细胞亚群百分比下降，这可能是使用丝瓜叶提取物治疗乳腺癌或与传统治疗联合使用的重要指标。
丝瓜已被证明对三种不同亚型的乳腺癌具有抗癌活性，包括 luminal A、luminal B 和 Her2/neu 丰富型，此外，它对大量肿瘤细胞和具有高致瘤潜力的 CD44/24 肿瘤干细胞亚群都具有细胞毒性作用，这些结果通过测量治疗后它们的存活数量和球体形成试验结果得到证实。
