Tehran University of Medical Sciences Traditional and Integrative Medicine 2476-5104 6 4 2021 12 27 333 347 EN Mahmoud Osanloo Department of Medical Nanotechnology, Schools of Advanced Medicine in Technologies, Fasa University of Medical Sciences, Fasa, Iran AND Noncommunicable Diseases Research Center, Fasa University of Medical Sciences, Fasa, Iran Ali Ghanbariasad Noncommunicable Diseases Research Center, Fasa University of Medical Sciences, Fasa, Iran AND Department of Medical Biotechnology, Schools of Medicine, Fasa University of Medical, Fasa, Iran Ali Taghinezhad Noncommunicable Diseases Research Center, Fasa University of Medical Sciences, Fasa, Iran 2021 04 15 2021 08 25 Since synthetic chemotherapeutic drugs produce a certain degree of drug resistance and due to their common side effects, such as damage to hematopoietic cells and hair loss, it is necessary to use herbal medicine as a substrate to develop new anticancer drugs. The ingredients of three essential oils (EO) were identified using gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC-MS) analysis. Their anticancer activities have been investigated on four human breast cancer cell lines, including MCF-7, MDA-MB-175, MDA-MB-231, and MDA-MB-468. In addition, their antioxidant activity was evaluated using the 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) assay. The three plants were investigated for identifications of the ingredients of their EOs, and major ingredients were identified in each plant as alpha-phellandrene (26.75 %) in Anethum graveolens L., limonene (61.83 %) in Citrus limon (L.) Osbeck, and zingiberene (30.28 %) in Zingiber officinale Roscoe. Among the EOs, C. limon was significantly more effective than others; its half-maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) on MCF-7 was obtained at 201 µg.mL-1. Furthermore, Z. officinale EO showed a higher antioxidant activities in comparison to the two other EOs. Considering the antioxidant and anticancer effects of the EOs, they could be further investigated as a possible complementary medicine in cancer. https://jtim.tums.ac.ir/index.php/jtim/article/view/387