Potential of Natural Antioxidants for Upregulating Apoptosis in Cervical Cancer Cells: A Cellular and Molecular Study

Abstract

Natural antioxidants (NAs) are promising substances, which are established as potent therapeutic agents. However, the anticancer potential of many of them is not completely known. In this research, the anticancer effect of three natural antioxidants including geraniol (Ge), citronellol (Cit), and quercetin (Qu), and their combination by estimating their cytotoxicity on the Hela cells at doses from 15.625 to 1000 µg/mL was investigated. Moreover, cisplatin (Cis) was employed as a strong competitive comparison. After estimating the IC50 value of each treatment in the MTT assay, western blot was performed with the obtained doses for further evaluation. In this regard, the expressions of caspase3, Bax, Bcl2, and p53 proteins were examined. Our results showed that the combination of these natural substances had significant cytotoxic potential by upregulating all mentioned proteins, which demonstrated the apoptosis pathway. Our findings had also the same results in both Cis-receiving and non-Cis-receiving cells regarding some indices. Consequently, it was suggested to further investigate these natural antioxidants as both main or adjuvant therapies for their anticancer potential and side-effect reduction in vivo. Overall, it can be concluded that these natural antioxidants are effective against cancer cells by upregulating the apoptosis pathway.