Cytotoxic activities of some Greek Labiatae herbs

Nineteen methanolic crude plant extracts of Labiatae family, collected in Greece from different locations, were evaluated for cytotoxic activity against brine shrimps and three human cancer cell lines along with a normal mouse cells as a control cell line. In the brine shrimp lethality test, Mentha pulegium was the only sample found to be active with an LC50 value 347.3 mug/ml, while all remaining samples had LC50 values greater than 1000 mug/ml. In case of Caco-2 and HepG2 cell lines, only one sample, namely Thymus parnassicus Halacsy, was active with LC50 values 44.6 and 50.3 mug/ml respectively, while against MCF-7 cell line, two samples, namely, Clinopodium vulgare L. (LC50: 60.4 mug/ml), and Thymus parnassicus Halacsy (LC50: 54.7 mug/ml), were found active. Copyright (C) 2003 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.