According to recent studies, the Plantaginaceae, which are traditional Chinese herbal remedies, have potential for use in
viral infection treatment and
cancer therapy.
Linalool and
p-coumaric acid are two of the biologically active compounds that can be isolated from the Plantaginaceae. This study mainly focused on investigating the bioactivity of
linalool as well as the bioactivity of
p-coumaric acid in terms of their cytotoxic effects on
cancer cells. Whether the mechanisms of such effects are generated through apoptosis and immunoregulatory activity were also investigated. By using WST-1 analysis, it was shown that
linalool and
p-coumaric acid have good inhibitory effects against breast, colorectal and
liver cancer cells. The IC50 values of
linalool for those
cancer cell types were 224 μM, 222 μM, and 290 μM, respectively, and the IC50 values of
p-coumaric acid were 693 μM, 215 μM and 87 μM, respectively. Cell cycle analysis also confirmed that
linalool and
p-coumaric acid can lead to apoptosis. By using flow cytometry, it was determined that treatment with
linalool rather than
p-coumaric acid significantly increased the sub-G1 phase and that there were more cells concentrated in the G1 phase. Furthermore, by using
cytokine array analysis, we found that
linalool can stimulate IFN-γ,
IL-13,
IL-2,
IL-21, IL-21R,
IL-4, IL-6sR and TNF-α secretion. This demonstrated that in addition to the bidirectional regulation capabilities found in
linalool, it also induces Th1 cellular immune response in T-47D cells. These results showed that
linalool holds great potential for use in
cancer therapy, and we believe that it could provide an alternative way to take action against
tumors.