Study of cytotoxic effect of Essential oil of Tymus vulgaris L by MTT and Trypan blue assay on breast cancer cell line MCF-7

Breast Cancer is the most common cancer in the Iranian women. Essential oil of Thymus is containing anticancer compounds including thymol. The aim if this research was studding the effect of thymus essential oil on the breast cancer cell line MCF-7 using MTT and Trypan blue methods, and comparing of its effect with taxol as a well-known anticancer agent. In this research, MCF-7 and Hu-02 cell lines were porched from IBRC institute. The cells were treated by different concentrations of Thymus essential oil and taxol in the times of 24, 48 and 72 hours. The cytotoxicity of the treatments was measured by means of MTT and trypan blue staining. Results showed that Thymus essential oil had cytotoxic effect, in different doses, on the MCF-7 cell line. The highest cytotoxic effect was measured in the group treated by 125 μg/ml of Thymus essential oil. The Thymus essential did not show any cytotoxic effect on the cells of HU-02. Results were also showed that the essential oil can increase the cytotoxicity effect of Taxol on the cancer cell line, thus it seems that is effective in breast cancer therapy; probably, it causes to cell death by apoptosis induction.