Table 2.

Outcome and purpose of recent in vitro studies on cancer therapy of betalain.

Source of betalain	Type of study	Applications	Outcomes	Ref.
Celosia argentea var. plumosa	In vitro	Production of betalains	Production of dihydroxylated betalains in the cells during eight days of culture	[95]
Lepismium lorentzianum, Lepismium lumbricoides, Rhipsalis floccosa and Pfeiffera ianthothele	In vitro	Antimutagenic	Significant antimutagenic effect for L. lumbricoides and weak effect for P. ianthothele and R. floccosa	[96]
Opuntia spp.	In vitro (various cell lines)	Anticancer	Among the cancer lines tested, the viability of prostate and colon cells was the most affected	[97]
Beta vulgaris (beetroot)	In vitro Lung cancer (A549), human prostate (PC-3) and breast (MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231) cancer cell lines	Anticancer	Beetroot ingestion can be used to prevent cancer Betanin may contribute to the cytotoxicity and chemo preventive activities of beetroot extract when used alone or in combination with doxorubicin to mitigate the toxic side effects of the latter	[76,98]
	Ex vivo (Rat skin and lung tissues)
Opuntia spp.	In vitro Human colon cancer cell line (HT29)	Antiproliferative	An unexpected increase in intracellular ROS accumulation in HT29 cells suggested that cancer cell death may be induced by the pro-oxidant effect	[99]
O. ficus-indica	In vitro Chronic myeloid leukemia cell line (K562)	Anticancer	Betanin induced apoptosis in K562 cells through the intrinsic pathway and this was mediated by the release of cytochrome c from the mitochondria into the cytosol as well as by PARP cleavage	[78]