Phenolic compounds play an important role on the growth and reproduction of plants and also exhibit a wide range of pharmacological activities such as anti-allergic, anti-artherogenic, anti-inflammatory and anticancer. But the data about toxicity of many phenolics are lacking and limited. The aim of this study was to evaluate the cytotoxic effects of five different commonly used phenolic compounds (galangin, limonene, naringin, puerarin and ursolic acid) which are widely used because of their health protecting effects by neutral red uptake (NRU) assay in Chinese hamster fibroblast cell line (V79). It is found that all of the studied phenolics decreased the cell viability of V79 cells in a dose dependent manner. The IC50 values of galangin, limonene, naringin, puerarin and ursolic acid were found to be 104.36 pM, 10574 pM, 1976.4 pM, 51.71 pM and 92.94 pM, respectively.
Keywords: Galangin, Limonene, Naringin, Puerarin, Ursolic acid, Neutral red uptake assay