ABSTRACT
Background: Osteosarcoma is a malignant cancer that effect bone and metastasizing to many vital organs such as lungs. There are many available drugs to treat the disease including tamoxifen, methotrexate (MTX), and cisplatin which have their own side effects and hurdles to become drugs of choice for the disease. On the other hand, introduction of herbal drugs as chemotherapeutic agents opened up new arena to potentiate the existing treatment by exhibiting synergy. Piperine (PPN) is widely used drug as anti-cancer agent as well as it has anti-inflammatory, analgesic properties, and also used in the treatment of abdominal pains, tuberculosis, arthritis, and respiratory illness. Aims and Objective: Thus, this study was designed to investigate the synergistic inhibitory potential of PPN and MTX on the MG63 osteosarcoma cell lines in vitro. Materials and Methods: The cell lines were cultured on DMEM medium and investigated for cytotoxicity of the drugs using MTT assay at 540 nm in UV. Three groups of cell lines administered with PPN, MTX, and PPN+MTX (1:1) in various concentrations and IC50 values were calculated based on the % cell viability graphs. Results: Results showed that the IC50 of PPN was 38.65, MTX was 123.98, and PPN+MTX was 15.13 proving the significant synergistic cytotoxic effect of PPN and MTX in inhibiting the proliferation of MG63 cell lines. Conclusion: Further research needs to be conducted in this field to elucidate the synergistic pathways in which PPN has shown a better anti-osteosarcoma effect when combined with MTX.