Anti-inflammatory and pro-apoptotic properties of the polyherbal drug, MAT20, in MCF-7 cells

Breast cancer remains a serious health issue with approximately 2.3 million women diagnosed with breast cancer in 2020. Standard treatment approaches include surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. However, these treatments have side effects such as drug resistance, metastasis, and relapse. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate alternative therapy approaches that may mitigate the adverse effects of standard therapies. The emerging field of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) presents an intriguing possibility of using natural products as therapeutics. The main objective of this study was assessing the anticancer efficacy of MAT20, a polyherbal formulation with extracts of moringa, amla, and tulsi. In this study, we examined the anti-inflammatory properties of MAT20, along with phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate (PMA) and 5-fluorouracil (5-FU), on the MCF-7 breast cancer cell line. Specifically, we assessed the expression of the COX2 gene, a key marker of inflammation. We hypothesized that the addition of MAT20, targeting COX2 downregulation, may have a dual impact by not only reducing inflammation but also regulating programmed cell death pathways by apoptotic gene expression studies. Our results demonstrated that MAT20 decreased the PMA-induced COX2 expression in MCF-7 cells. MAT20 treatment in MCF-7 cells showed upregulation of BAX and BAD (pro-apoptotic genes) and downregulation of BCL2 and BCL2L1 (anti-apoptotic genes) in MCF-7 cells. Overall, our results showed that MAT20 may have anti-inflammatory and pro-apoptotic effects on MCF-7 cells.