PCR Analysis of Gene Expression in Response to Tomato Leaf Extract in MCF-7 Breast Cancer Cells

Tomato (Solanum lycopersicon) is one of the most widely consumed fresh vegetables in the industrialized world. It is also commonly used by various food industries as raw material for production of derived products such as ketchup and puree. Because tomatoes are highly versatile and easy to prepare, they are recommended to be part of a healthy diet. Few studies have showed that by eating tomato the breast (Zhang et al., 2009), head and neck cancers incidents were decrease (Freedman et al., 2008) and tomato may also be strongly protective against neurodegenerative diseases (Rao and Balachandran, 2002). Lycopene from the fruit and α-tomatine from the leaves of tomato showed anti-oxidant and anti-cancer activity to few cancer cell lines in-vitro and in-vivo (Shieh et al., 2011; Palozza et al., 2011; 2012; Chao et al., 2012; Kelkel et al., 2011; Lee et al., 2012; Teodoro et al., 2012; Tuzcu et al., 2012; Sharoni et al., 2012). In addition, previous studies have reported that tomato leaves synthesize glycoalkaloid dehydrotomatine and α-tomatine, which may have