Evaluation of cytotoxic activity of Syringodium isoetifolium against human breast cancer cell line - an in silico and in vitro study

Seagrass is a natural, renewable, and much unexplored marine resource, which are capable, and reliable sources in the field of pharmaceuticals and drug discovery. The seagrass, Syringodium isoetifolium is our target plant for the study, which was collected from the Ramanathapuram district, Tamil Nadu. The current study is focused to evaluate the cytotoxic, cell cycle arrest, and apoptotic induction activities of the hydroalcoholic extract of S. isoetifolium against the human breast cancer (MCF-7) cell line. The cytotoxic evaluation revealed that the extract inhibited MCF-7 proliferation with IC50 value of 230.32 μg/ml. Evaluation of MCF-7 cell cycles demonstrated that the extract arrested the cell cycle in the S phase and continued to the G2/M phase at half of the IC50 value. The extract induced apoptotic of MCF-7 cells about 30.61% which was nearly the same with aripiprazole as a positive control (52.35%). Nootkatone significantly binds to the target proteins – HSP 90 and HER2 kinase with the least binding energy was predicted as the most active anticancer compounds by a molecular docking study. In light of the findings, it can be said that the hydroalcoholic extract of S. isoetifolium has the potential to be a therapeutic agent for breast malignancies by acting as an anticancer component. It can be used as an anticancer agent on its own and/or as a scaffold for analog synthesis to develop novel anticancer agents with improved therapeutic efficacy