Anticancer Effect of Ferulic Acid on Cultured Human Skin Melanoma Cells

It is demonstrated that phenolic compound has cytotoxic effect on cancer cells. Recently, ferulic acid is involved in anticancer activity by showing the decrease of cell viability in cancer cells. But, the anticancer mechanism of ferulic acid is left unknown. The purpose of this study was to examine the anticancer activity of ferulic acid on NIH3T3 fibroblasts and human skin melanoma cells (SK-MEL-3). The anticancer activity was measured by determining the cytotoxicy of ferulic acid on these cells. The cytotoxicity was measured by cell viability via XTT assay in these cells. In this study, ferulic acid decreased cell viability according to the dose-dependent manners after human skin melanoma cells were treated with various concentrations of ferulic acid for 48 hours. especially, ferulic acid remarkably decreased cell viability at a concentration of $120{\mu}M$ compared with control in human skin melanoma cells. While, ferulic acid did not show the significant decrease of cell viability at concentrations of $30{\sim}120{\mu}M$ in NIH3T3 fibroblasts. These results suggest that ferulic acid showed anticancer activity in cancer cells such as human skin melanoma cells by the decrease of cell viability significantly.