Comparison of biological effects of Ceylon cinnamon water Extract and metformin. CWE vs Metformin

Purpose-Human hepatocellular carcinoma is one of the most common causes of death in the world. Cinnamon may decrease the expression of Genes associated with type 2 diabetes risk. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of Cinnamon Water Extracted (CWE) and Metformin on expression of the genes relative to diabetes type 2 and the cell proliferation in the hepatocellular carcinoma cell line (ATCC HB-8065), followed by bioinformatics comparisons with publicly available transcriptomic data sets for metformin-treated HepG2 cells. Outcomes of this project will provide evidence for the effectiveness of Ceylon cinnamon water extract compared to the current standard therapy for type 2 diabetes, metformin.Methods: HepG2 was cultured in DMEM medium at 37°C for 24h as a pre-culture and then treated by different concentrations of metformin (0, 48.5, 97, 194, 388, 0.75, 1.5, 3.1, 6.2, 12.5, 25, 50, and 100 mg mL-1) and Cinnamon Water Extract (0, 2, 4, 7.5, 15, 31, 63, 125, 0.25, 0.5, and 0.75 mg mL-1) at different times (24 and 48 h). Cell viability was assessed by the MTT assay. Total RNA was extracted and was analyzed by RNA Sequencing was used to determine the effect of CWE on the transcriptional activity and gene expression of the HepG2. HepG2 cell was exposed to high glucose with or without CWE to compare glucose up taking between CWE and Metformin.Results: Viability of CWE is higher than metformin and the Cinnamon extract does not cause any adverse effects in the tested cell lines, and hence could be considered nontoxic and safe. CWE significantly decrease glucose to normal levels in HepG2 cells exposed to high glucose. The expression of genetic variants associated with type 2 diabetes using CWE had an inverse correlation in comparison to HepG2 without treatment. While the metformin gene expression in HepG2 cells compared to CWE is not significant according to |fold change|<1. Results shows CWE and Metformin significantly induce gene expression human liver cancer cell line, HepG2 cell.