Biological and Phytochemical evaluation of plants: l-in-vitro cytotoxicity assays of extracts from fifty Egyptian plants

A cytotoxicity screening study was carried out on the ethanolic extracts of 50 unselected higher plants growing in Egypt. The assays were performed on 2 proliferating mouse cell lines, a normal fibroblast line [NIH3T3] and a virus-transformed [ras] line [KA31T]. 10% of the examined extracts exhibited substantial cytotoxic activity arbitrarily defined by LC50 of 10 mug/ml or less in both cell lines