Vol. 9, Issue 12, Part G (2025)

The review offers an extensive overview of the antiproliferative properties of plant-based phenolic compounds on the system of cancer research with MTT assay as the main evaluation tool. Phenolic acids, flavonoids, stilbestenes, tannins, and phenolic compounds are largely known as strong antioxidants and cytotoxic agents with numerous molecular mechanisms of cancer progression. The MTT assay has been considered as one of the most effective, cost effective as well as extensively used colorimetric procedures in the evaluation of cell viability, metabolic activity and cytotoxicity brought about by drugs. It allows the quantitative determination of the activity of dehydrogenase in mitochondria which is an indirect yet good measure of cell proliferation and viability. This review presents findings of recent studies that show in vitro that plant-derived phenolics can inhibit the growth of cancer cells by inducing apoptosis, arresting cell cycle, regulating the production of oxidative stress and inhibiting oncogenic signaling pathways. The particular attention is given to the comparison of the antiproliferative activity of various phenolic classes on a variety of cancer cell lines such as breast, colon, liver, and lung cancers. Dose response relationships, IC50 values and variation in sensitivity between the cancer models are also addressed in the review. In addition, the paper has assessed methodological issues associated with MTT assay such as the effect of solvents, incubation period, stability of phenolic compounds and any interference with the assay. Difficulties like overestimation or underestimation of cytotoxicity because of the color of a compound, its solubility or redox potential are discussed in a very significant manner. In general, this review demonstrates the necessity to combine MTT-based tests with other biochemical and molecular methods in an attempt to have a more precise overview of the cytotoxicity caused by phenolics. The results highlight the therapeutic role of the plant phenolics as potential anticancer agents with promise and advocate further studies to streamline the applications in preclinical cancer models.