Evaluation of the effect of alcoholic extract of Zingiber officinale rhizomes on oral squamous cell carcinoma in comparison with normal rat fibroblast cells

Medicinal plants are used to treat various diseases, including malignancies. Since no studies to date have evaluated the effect of Zingiber officinale on oral squamous cell carcinoma, the present study was undertaken to evaluate the anti-tumoral effects of Zingiber officinale on malignant cell lines of oral squamous cell carcinoma.
Materials & In this in vitro study oral squamous cell carcinoma cells (KB) and normal rat fibroblast cells (L929) as controls were cultured in enriched RPMI-1640 medium. Then extract of Zingiber officinale rhizomes was procured from the Iranian Research Center for Herbal and Traditional Medicine and the cells were treated with 0.1‒768 μg/mL concentrations of the extract for 24, 48 and 72 hours. Thereafter, the viability of the cells was assessed by methyl toluidine blue (MTT) method. Statistical analysis was performed with SPSS 20, using one-way ANOVA. Tukey tests were used to compare the mean scores.
In this study IC50 was 148.83 and 358.87 μg/mL for KB and L929 cells, respectively. IC50 ratio for normal-to-tumoral cells was 358.87:148.83 = 2.41, indicating that a 2.5fold higher concentration of Zingiber officinale extract is needed for cytotoxic effects on normal cell compared to tumoral cells. Therefore, based on the results, Zingiber officinale extract exhibited more cytotoxic effects on tumoral cells (KB) than on normal cells (L929).
This study showed that the alcoholic extract of Zingiber officinale rhizomes exerted cytotoxic effects on tumoral cells of oral squamous cell carcinoma. Moreover, it exerted more cytotoxic effects on tumoral cells compared to normal cells.