Cytotoxicity and antimicrobial activity of allicin and its transformation products

Cytotoxicity and antimicrobial activities of allicin and related organo-sulphur products obtained by microwave-assisted transformation of allicin in methanol were studied. The mixture of transformation products of allicin was analysed using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) and represents the mixture of ajoenes, vinyldithiins and diallyl disulfide. Cytotoxicity of allicin and its transformation products of allicin were studied against human melanoma FemX and human embryonic lung fibroblast MRC-5 cell lines using MTT test. Allicin and the transformation products of allicin exhibited high selectivity against FemX (IC 50 = 0.71 ± 0.20 and IC50 = 0.64 ± 0.52 µg/ml, respectively), while the activity against healthy MRC-5 cells was lower (IC 50 = 66.48 ± 3.75 and IC 50 = 64.5 ± 1.50 µg/ml, respectively). Allicin has shown strong activity against tested Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria and very powerful antifungal activity with minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) at 0.001 to 0.008 mg ◊ 10 -1 /ml and MFC at 0.004 to 0.03 mg ◊ 10 -1 /ml. The transformation products of allicin possessed also very strong antibacterial and antifungal activity, but lower than allicin.