Introduction and objectives: Colorectal cancer (CRC) ranks among the highest causes of cancer related deaths in both men and women worldwide. Due to poor prognosis of CRC and inefficiency of current treatments, the search for new and more effective therapies is ongoing. Galbanic acid, C24H30O5, is a natural product belonging to the class sesquiterpene coumarins with a wide range of pharmaceutical activities such as antiviral, anticoagulant, anticancer and cancer chemopreventive effects. In present study, cytotoxic effects of galbanic acid was assessed on LoVo cells as a human colon cancer cell line. Materials and methods: Galbanic acid was isolated and characterized from the roots of Ferula szowitsiana DC., a plant of Apiaceae family. LoVo cells, obtained from Pasteur Institute (Tehran, Iran), were grown in RPMI1640 supplemented with 10% fetal bovine serum and incubated at 37°C in the presence of 5% CO2. For viability assessment, cells were seeded in 96 well plates and treated with increasing concentrations of galbanic acid (20, 40 and 80 µM) for 3 consecutive days. Afterwards, alamarBlue was added to each well and upon 2 h incubation in the dark at 37°C, optical density was measured by a plate reader at 600 nm. To calculate the percentage of cell viability, cells treated with 0.4% DMSO were considered as control. Results and conclusion: Assessment of cell viability indicated that 20 µM galbanic acid did not induce toxic effects even after 3 days. However, upon 24, 48 and 72 h treatment with 40 µM galbanic acid, viability of cells was as 98%, 89% and 95%, respectively. More considerably, cell viability was reduced down to 81%, 68% and 79% upon 24, 48 and 72 h treatment with 80 µM galbanic acid, respectively. In conclusion, our findings indicated that galbanic acid induced its effects in a time and dose dependent manner, and that concentrations with low toxicity could be used in future to affect migration/metastasis ability of human CRC cells.

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