Anticancer activity of bioactive compound chavicol as potential toxic against human lung cancer A549 cells

Cellular breakdown in the lungs is the most well-known human disease, and it is also the leading cause of death. The majority of anticancer therapies have substantial toxicity and serious health issues because of the multidrug resistance upon treatment with various drugs. Thus development of successful therapeutic solutions remains as a key factor in the pharmaceuticals. For the effective treatment of cancer, bioactive substances are the most essential in the domain of therapeutic use as they have minimal or no side effects to the host. In this study, we explore the in vitro anti-cancer efficacy of bioactive compound chavicol against human lung cancer cells (A-549). The treatment with chavicol compound inhibited cancer cell growth, survival, migration, and invasion. In A-549 cells, the cytotoxic efficacy of chavicol was shown to be significant with about 31 mu g/mL while the normal cells had not shown any significant adverse effect. The morphological alterations related with apoptosis were observed using acridine orange and ethidium bromide staining (AO/EtBr) with various doses of chavicol. Following that, using fluorescence microscope analysis, the effect of chavicol on cell cycle stage analysis and mitochondrial membrane potential was studied. According to the current findings, chavicol therapy led to loss of mitochondrial membrane potential stability in A-549 cells. Overall, this study had clearly shown the potential exploration of bioactive compound chavicol in the therapeutic use against lung cancer.